The Banilad-Talamban Road issue

For our special presentation on our talk show “ Straight from the Sky,” we bring back to your screens what we’ve gathered about the Challenges of Mega Cebu. I am bringing this show back to emphasize the need for us Cebuanos to not just sit up on the fence and do nothing about many of our problems in Cebu, like the road widening that is taking nearly 10 years to finish. There is something terribly wrong with our current political leadership and we need to crack the whip so we can push for reforms sooner or later.

With us tonight are Prof. Perry Fajardo, executive director of the Cebu Business Club & Professor of Economics at the USC and Fortunato Sanchez, Jr. subcommittee chair for the Metro Cebu Development Coordinating Board. These two gentlemen bring out the inherent problems that are affecting our day-to-day lives. So watch this interesting program again on SkyCable’s channel 61 at 8:00 tonight with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time and channel and replays on MyTV’s channel 30 Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7:00AM and 9:00PM respectively.

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One of the things my friends greeted me with when I got back from my US trip last week was the no left turn issue along the Banilad-Talamban Road that the Cebu City Traffic Operations & Management is implementing. First of all, I’m glad that finally, CITOM got the picture… that one of the principal problems along this roadway was due to the Left-Turning vehicles.

When Mayor Mike Rama took office for his first term, I told him that there should firstly be a no-left turn policy in effect between the two flyovers along Grand Convention Center as this was the principal cause of the traffic congestion in that area, secondly because you could make u-turns under the two flyovers. But then Mayor Mike refused to listen and now you know, that is why I did not join CITOM again. Of course it should be said once and for all that the Ban –Tal roadway should have been widened a long time ago.

But first a little bit of history. The root cause of this problem happened around 20 years ago when our political leaders and planners always said that the demography of people living within Cebu City was moving towards the north along the Ban-Tal road. So many real estate companies started putting up subdivisions along this road, from ordinary villages to plush and expensive subdivisions and many Cebuanos wanted to live in the north because it was sort of an exclusive or the “in” thing.

Unfortunately, the planners in Cebu City, including those from Mandaue City didn’t really care to increase road capacity. After all, 20 years ago vehicles hardly passed those roads. Fast-forward to today and Ban-Tal has become the EDSA of Cebu! If you didn’t notice, the most problematic stretch is from AS Fortuna Ave. to Manuel L. Quezon Ave. and that’s because that was the stretch that was supposed to be widened, however during our time at the Metro Cebu Development Projects 1, then Mayor Tomas Osmeña agreed to shift this road widening to AS. Fortuna in Mandaue.

Now I’m not saying that it was a wrong move. After all, AS Fortuna Ave. needed to be widened too. The only problem with AS Fortuna today and I hope Mayor Jonas Cortes and the Mandaue City Council would listen is that, they have put a Pay-Parking along both sides of this road. In my book, it is a violation of MCDP I agreements where no-parking should be allowed on the roads that MCDP widened. I hope Mandaue City does something about this before traffic in AS Fortuna results to a standstill.

So today, the widening of the portion from AS Fortuna Ave. to M.L. Quezon Ave. should have been done 10 years ago. But that has not happened and widening is not on the radar screens. Even if it happens again, let me remind you of Cebu City’s most idiotic road widening projects. The one along Gorordo Ave. to Arch. Reyes Ave., a stretch of only 500 yards, took 11 years to complete. The other of course is the still on-going widening of M. Velez St. that is now on its 9th year.

Let me add that when I was chair of CITOM, I already asked the Cebu City Council to widen the road from Talamban all the way to Pit-os, which is a barangay road because back in 2001, I already knew that this road would not be sufficient to handle our current road traffic.

Now for the left-turn issues. I had a chat with Rueben Almendras last Saturday and I told him that what is needed are u-turn slots along this route perhaps 500 yards apart. One of the problems along this route is due to taxicab drivers making u-turns anywhere. But if you allow u-turns along designated areas, you will no longer see a long line of cars like in that news photo while there’s no traffic along the other side. Abangan!

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