In the past weeks, we have been discussing a number of topics which ranged from the safety of using nuclear energy, comparing nuclear power to fossil fuels, building bricks out of recycled plastic bags, Pope Francis’ climate encyclical, extreme weather, global warming and even the Paris climate change agreement.
This week, I thought that we might make a slight change and delve into what could be considered as two very important problems of our home – Baguio City – and these are traffic and population congestion.
I learned from a news report last week that many local residents are not satisfied with the capability of the Anti-Road Obstruction Task Force in Baguio City because there still are many vehicles obstructing roads and streets here.
Although the task force reported that they have confiscated around 4,000 vehicle license plates already since they started about five months ago, many say that this was still not enough because they still see many public and private vehicles illegally parked almost everywhere from ‘No Parking’ zones, sidewalks, alleys, pedestrian lanes and even obstructing ramps intended for physically handicapped persons.
According to Senior Superintendent Armando Gapuz, chief of the Baguio City Police Office Traffic Management Branch, the main reason for obstruction aside from there being too many vehicles is because many motorists simply don’t follow the law and just park anywhere.
He said that they have not let up on their continuous campaign against these errant drivers through their ‘baklas plaka’ operations, wherein vehicle license plates are confiscated and fines are paid by the vehicle owner or driver to penalize them before these will be returned. This has reportedly been authorized under a city ordinance.
He said that they have also been responding to telephone calls and reports of double parking, and of vehicles being parked where they are not allowed. Saying that the only remedy to this is to just follow traffic rules, he was quoted as saying, “ang mga tao naman kasi, talagang may pasaway lang talaga.”
I guess his traffic enforcers have not been passing Kennon Road recently or they would have noticed allotted parking spaces painted yellow along the sidewalks in Puliwes barangay, which are not only violations of Republic Act 4136 or the Land Transportation and Traffic Code of the Philippines, but which was done without the safety of passing pedestrians in mind.
Imagine that? First, it already is illegal for vehicles to park along the highway. Second, it is also illegal to park on sidewalks, and to make it worst, these motorized monstrosities physically grabbed the sidewalks from poor pedestrians who walk there. Just asking, but are some barangay officials involved here?
Over at adjacent Camp 8, the same traffic enforcers may not have also noticed that public utility jeepneys and other vehicles are not only parked unattended at times along the highway in front of the barangay’s main waiting shed, but most of the time “triple-parked”.
And all around the Dona Aurora Bueno Elementary School in that same barangay, allotted parking spaces are also painted along the barangay road in the similar yellow color as Puliwes. Are barangay officials allowed to do that?
On records of the Land Transportation Office, in the Cordillera alone, a total of 133,099 private, public and government vehicles were registered in 2013. That was over three years ago.
In all probability, at least a quarter of that or about 33,000 vehicles are either Baguio-based or are driven to and around our city every month. No wonder motorists can hardly drive around Baguio’s expanded central business district during the Panagbenga, Holy Week, Christmas break and other long weekends.
Motorists claim that there really is a lack of enough parking spaces in Baguio because of too narrow streets, especially in the barangays, and also because of the proliferation of too many people and vehicles everywhere around the city. I clearly remember, just like a few years before the 1990 killer earthquake, Baguio is simply getting too over-congested.
According to the census of population conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority last August to September 2015, a total of 345,366 residents were accounted for in Baguio City alone. This is more than 10 times the 25,000 to 30,000 residents Daniel Burnham envisioned for the city when it was still under the urban planning stage.
For our sake, and that of our children, and our children’s children, some measures have to be formulated by both the government and private sectors to lessen the number of people migrating to Baguio or at least to entice them to reside instead in other BLISTT areas like La Trinidad, Itogon, Sablan, Tuba and Tublay. This could be done by offering more affordable housing in these neighboring towns like low-cost housing and those under a rent-to-own program.
Other amenities may also be offered in these towns like better markets, schools, work places and other basic facilities which could be made more reasonable to middle and low-income families.
In that way, with these towns also having cool weather conditions similar to Baguio, but with more affordable places to live, study and work in, so many people and their vehicles wouldn’t congest our beloved city.