EDITORIAL - Back to the Stone Age

With very very few exceptions, there is almost no street in the city that does not have potholes, or otherwise gives the impression that it is a crumbling piece of infrastructure. It is a sight, and a physical experience, that does not do the city any honor or good.

Why this is so, we do not know. Maybe it is the time of year, and fears of the rainy season just washing away any repair work or improvement with the rains. Or maybe the city just doesn't have the money for street repairs.

But whether it is prudence or plain absence of funds, the inescapable fact is that the crumbling feeling and the time of the season both conspire to project the city in the most unflattering light.

As the premier city in the south, and the most important city outside Metro Manila, we do not deserve the kind of impression we must be giving visitors, of which there are plenty at this time of the year.

And there will be more, as right after the holidays, the Fiesta Señor season will kick in almost immediately. Whether or not the Sinulog will be as grand as last year will not likely diminish in a significant way the kind of tourist and devotee numbers we used to get.

The city cannot continue to ignore the crumbling situation of city streets because no other indicator is perhaps more readily apparent and more persuasive than what people use to move from one place to another, be it short hops or over long distances.

People are moving creatures. They are not trees. But while people are mobile, they are not like birds that glide through the air effortlessly or fish that swim through the water gracefully.

People are doomed to terrestrial locomotion and therefore always at the mercy of the bumps and humps of uneven earthly terrain. Over time people did manage to smoothen over their ride. But is Cebu City reversing the march of progress and reverting back to the Stone Age?