The idiomatic expression "sounding like a broken record" was, for a lack of known historical account of its etymology, probably coined in my generation. I surmise that it evolved from playing a physically damaged record on that old technology called phonograph. You see, music, in my time, did not source from MP3"s. Rather, it came from playing vinyl discs, like 45's (because they achieved 45 revolutions per minute) and long playing [LP] records (which ran for thirty three and one third revolutions per minute), on the turntable of phonographs. The rich families had their expensive turntables tapped to high-end components.
When the needle hit a deep scratch of a record on play, it would re-groove. Re-groove was the term disc-jockeys gave each time the needle kept going back to an earlier part of the music where there was a scratch on the disc. The repetition of the music was irritating such that when someone kept on repeating a point he had already made, he sounded like a broken record.
I am going to sound, indeed, like a broken record. Many times in the past years of writing this column, I have been hammering on the need to implement the Cebu City Revised Road Ordinance of 1992, passed by a council that I was a part of. In each of those previous write-ups, I kept repeating that that local law adopted three concepts namely: (1) straighten curved roads; (2) widen narrow roads; and (3) build new roads. Unabashedly, I claimed that all formulations were designed to anticipate the traffic problem that we foresaw to be emerging.
Had the city gradually, yes, just gradually, implemented the ordinance, the monstrous traffic gridlock which we experienced last few days along the Banilad-Talamban corridor, (called Ban-Tal, for brevity), perhaps, would have not occurred. If during the two decades that such basic ordinance took effect, budgetary allocations were made for the widening of narrow roads and for the construction of new ones, the flow of our present traffic would have been smoother and faster than what we are actually experiencing. That it took the mayor himself to observe personally the monstrosity of our traffic problem only proved that it has gone beyond tolerable levels.
It is quite easy to imagine that if a wide road had been built from somewhere in the IT Park to run parallel to the Gov. Cuenco Avenue towards the immediate outskirts of the Maria Luisa Estate park and unto Talamban, the ever increasing volume of vehicles traversing the area could have been very well absorbed as to prevent jams.
But, there is, really, no use blaming all past city administrations for failing to heed the mandate of that ordinance. Our former mayors must, in their watch and on their call, have other priorities than anticipating traffic jams. There is no point recriminating. It is not going to address the worsening situation. Having said that, the inevitable conclusion is that the present leaders have to double their efforts to make up for the failure of their predecessors.
Few articles back, I wrote about the need of the city administrations of their Honor, Mayors Michael L. Rama, of Cebu City and Jonas Cortes, to build a road starting at A. S. Fortuna Street, and cutting across the San Vicente Village in Subangdako and Casals Village in Mabolo and ending at the San Jose de la Montana. When constructed, it will take care of vehicles coming from the north like Mandaue City.
I am repeating it here because this need updates the Revised Road Ordinance. In 1992, this was not within our radar for the reasons that, firstly, it would touch an area beyond the jurisdiction of Cebu City council and secondly, we were not able to project the increase of vehicular traffic that exponentially.
Now, if the "no-left turn" is the mayor's immediate solution to the Ban-Tal traffic problem, he should consider implementing the concepts of the Revised Road Ordinance of 1992 so that we shall no longer say things like a broken record.