Remembering Pres. Ramon Magsaysay

For our special presentation on our talk show “Straight from the Sky,” we bring you a discussion on Metro Cebu’s Future Mass Transportation Programs. Surely by now people here must be asking when are we going to get rid of the venerable jeepneys? There are a myriad of mass transportation solutions out there and for Cebuanos who want Cebu to fast forward themselves into the 21st century, we should have a mass transportation system by now. So what happened? Why has the jeepney remained our only means of mass transportation in Metro Cebu? Actually if you studied things carefully, the jeepney has started shrinking. For instance in many areas outside Metro Cebu, it has now been replaced by the multi-cab. In other inaccessible places, it has been replaced by the habal-habal. So replacing the jeepney after all isn’t difficult. All one needs to do is replace the jeepney with a better idea.

As you may have know by now. In the mid-90’s, then Mayor Tomas Osmeña, Sammy Darza, and I went to the city of Curritiba in Brazil in order to look into its stairless bus concept. It was actually a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) concept, which I also saw in Jakarta and which they call the Trans Millennio in Bogota, Colombia. There are many different BRT concepts that may be found all over the world and yes, Cebu City was prepared to introduce our own concept of the BRT.

Actually during my stint as CITOM chairman, I dabbled with a different concept which I called the “Stairless Jeepney”. In our studies, the problem with the jeepney is that it is rear loading and it takes a woman with a tight skirt a long time to board it. Because it is rear loading, another jeepney can just stop beside another jeepney loading passengers and get some of those passengers quickly — in the middle of the road of course.

In the end, we found two major areas where we could improve the jeepney, which today is no longer your MacArthur type jeep. Most of our jeepneys are already the Isuzu Elf size and we figured that if we made this a side-loading vehicle and if the City of Cebu elevated all the jeepney stops and we raised the roof of the jeepney, voila! We have a stairless jeepney that would not put our jeepney owners and drivers out of work. Unfortunately this project did not take off because somehow former Mayor Tomas Osmeña didn’t have the political will to pursue such a drastic concept.

So back to the BRT. What happened to it? Well tonight, we have with us Engr. Rene Santiago, a consultant for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) who has been studying mass transit systems in the Philippines for a long time now. He was there for the Light Rail Transit (LRT) from conceptualization to implementation. He was one of those who created the Love Bus of the Metro Manila Transit Corp. (MMTC) and he knows about our BRT and why it was not implemented. So watch this interesting show on SkyCable’s channel 61 with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time and channel with replays also on MyTV channel 30 on M-W-F.

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Exactly 57 years ago today, the Philippines lost its most loved President in the person of Pres. Ramon Magsaysay who died in the slopes of Mt. Manunggal when his C-47 Dakota, a DC-3 that was turned into a presidential plane, crashed. His plane left the Lahug airstrip (it is now the AsiaTown I.T. Park) and turned left towards Manila, but somehow it lacked the power to fly over Mt. Manunggal and crashed. The downed aircraft was found on the next day and rescue teams recovered the burnt remains of the President. One survivor was newspaper man Nestor Mata who is still alive today and is still a journalist.

From the old black and white photographs of my father Atty. Jesus “Lindong” Avila, he was very close to Pres. Ramon Magsaysay. I still have at least two photos showing my Dad with the President beaming on him with his arms around his back. Somehow, I never got to know why he was close to the President. But 57 years ago, I was only six years old, but I won’t forget that day when we were still living in Ibarra Street when my Dad told us to dress up because we were going to the Lahug Airport.

Moments after we arrived in Lahug, a Bell UH-1H helicopter came in throwing a huge dust cloud on us as it landed, bearing the remains of the President. It was the first time for a six-year-old like me to see a helicopter. Later we went to the Camp Lapu-Lapu Chapel to pay our respects to the fallen President whose remains were flown to Manila for his funeral.

Pres. Magsaysay will always be remembered for opening up the doors of the Malacañang Palace to the people. This is why he is still the most loved President we ever had. He also fought the Communist insurgency with a motto, “Find em, Fight em, Finish em and offer them the hand of peace.” If we still have no peace with the Communists today it is because we did not follow the dictum handed down to us by Pres. Magsaysay.

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