Traffic flow in Mandaue City was not at all affected by the implementation of the No Left Turn measure in Cebu City’s Banilad-Talamban road, a traffic official in the city has said.
Glenn Antigua, assistant chief for operations of the Traffic Enforcement Agency of Mandaue (TEAM), said vehicular flow remained normal last week when the Cebu City Traffic Operations Management (Citom) started enforcing the rush hour restriction.
The No Left Turn scheme was imposed along the 8-kilometer stretch of the Banilad-Talamban (Ban-Tal) on Mayor Michael Rama’s order.
The mayor said the scheme was meant to speed up vehicular flow in one of the city’s major traffic gridlocks during rush hours.
“So far, we have not taken any measures as Mandaue has not been directly affected,” Antigua told Cebu Daily News.
He said, however, that they have noticed an increase in the volume of vehicles near the corner of Gov. Cuenco St. in barangay Cabancalan where vehicles from Ban-Tal were directed to make a U-turn.
“Makita man namo diri sa CCTV ang volume sa mga sakyanan diha nga medyo nagkadaghan (Footage from our closed-circuit television cameras show the unusual volume of vehicles there),” he said.
But the volume has so far not resulted in congestion and remains within manageable levels.
He said no one from Citom had coordinated with them on the traffic scheme.
Rama on Friday held a dialogue among road users to assess the traffic scheme. The mayor also formed a traffic management board of which 20 of the dialogue participants were selected to act as members to address traffic-related issues along the Ban-Tal road.
Meanwhile, a professor of the University of San Carlos Talamban Campus (USC-TC) decried Mayor Rama’s use of the term “violators” when he referred to the university’s covered pedestrian pathway in a media interview.
Posting his comment on his Facebook account, Prof. Alvin Abrea said the pathway has been there even before the construction of the Ban-Tal road.
“Instead of punishing the end-users for the ‘enclosed’ pedestrian lane along USC Talamban, whom you (called) violators for encroaching into the our-lane road, how about coordinating with the Congressman (Raul del Mar) … (and) the rest of the stakeholders. Iron this out. And I will greatly admire him (Rama) for that,” Abrea said.
Abrea, however, clarified that despite the kinks in the scheme, he lauded the mayor for attempting to solve the traffic congestion in the area.
“Clearly, this move was done with so much passion at heart,” he said. “He (Rama) can implement whatever he deems necessary without consulting his “stakeholders”. True. After all, he is the Mayor. And I greatly admire him for that.”
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