A cure worse than the disease

By: Modesto P. Sa-onoy

THERE is the plan being discussed by officials of the City of Bacolod to establish a terminal for passenger jeeps at the Vendors Plaza beside a mall at the reclamation area. The purpose of this terminal is to “force” passengers to take their ride here so that the vendors who were relocated from the different parts of the city will have customers.

The Vendors Plaza was constructed years back to decongest the Central Market and encourage sidewalk vendors to transfer here. The traditional route of passenger jeeps was redirected to pass there on the belief that passengers will do their marketing and take their ride home at the Plaza.

That project was a disaster. The jeeps did pass by the Plaza but skipped it because of its added cost and few people went there. They could buy their needs elsewhere. Eventually, the vendors left, paying a high price for a bad idea. The city never recovered the millions it spent on this place that became almost like a garbage dump.

There had been many ideas on how to make use of this place. Incumbent Mayor Evelio Leonardia knows about this more than any other officials because he had been in the city government far longer than the Vendors Plaza and had a hand in this project. He, of all people, should know why this project was a disaster and for that matter, he should either become more imaginative to make this work or reject the same idea that is now being proposed –converting the area into a terminal.

Ontologically a terminal, applied to a transport system, is an end-place. This means the jeeps will end and begin their trips here. They will stop, rest, take a nap, eat and talk while they wait for passengers or it is time to move on.

How big is the area for the proposed terminal? Close to the Vendors Plaza, not much but the parking areas from the corner of Fr. Ferrero Street, on both sides, till the Palanca Street are enough even for a hundred or more jeeps. But they are far off the Plaza which means people had to walk and considering the Filipino mentally to taking and debarking from where they stand, they would not find that proposed terminal to their liking.

The 60-day traffic rerouting recently approved by the city will bring into the planned terminal a reported 600 jeeps that will skip Rizal Street in front of the San Sebastian Cathedral and thus, as explained by BTAO, will decongest that area. That is well.

On the other hand, the rerouting that is expected to create customers for the Vendors Plaza will merely transfer the traffic jam from Rizal to Burgos. This clog will extend all the way to Lacson-Burgos and from the Public Plaza to the Capitol and then congest at the narrow streets to the Vendors Plaza. This is like solving one problem by creating another with a ripple effect on all streets of the city.

Rizal Street that will be decongested has four lanes, the traffic to be diverted will battle for space in two-lane streets. Imagine the chaos and the jam. The cost of this snarl in terms of time and fuel is unimaginable.

The rerouting to accommodate the Vendors Plaza is a case of the cure worse than the disease.

Is there a psychologist or a social scientist on public behavior in the city’s payroll? What we know for certain are political and financial manipulators in the city government, some seen, most invisible but powerful. The traffic experiments (we had several on an almost annual basis) had not solved the jams in the major streets of the city. Now the Bacolod traffic czars are experimenting another in the worst way – the terminal inside the city.

Surely, Bacolod City officials had been traveling around the world and the Philippines at public expense and for which they do not submit any written report of what they have learned. That they can approve this new experiment to appease the hundreds of illegal street vendors they nurtured for decades to secure their votes indicates that our gallivanting city officials did not learn from their travels abroad or knowing are afraid to implement measures to create a city with occasional and manageable traffic jams and without permanent illegal street vendors.