BAGUIO CITY October 14 – The city government is now in dire need of parking spaces that could be offered by private property owners like that of the SM City Baguio additional parking spaces and government agencies to accommodate the rapid growth in the number of motor vehicles plying the city’s streets that contribute to the monstrous traffic jams causing inconvenience to the motoring and commuting public daily.
Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan the realization of the SM City Baguio pay parking expansion, the put up of a multi-level parking building within the Ganza parking area and the opening of additional parking spaces by concerned government agencies over the existing properties would provide motorists with alternative parking in order to decongest the city’s central business district from vehicles that are parked along major roads that constrict traffic.
“We have to rid our roads in the central business district with vehicles that are parked for the whole day. We have to educate our people to avail of the existence of pay parking facilities once the projects will be completed,” Domogan stressed.
He ordered the City Environment and Parks Management Office (CEPMO) to prepare the terms of reference for the put up of the multi-level pay parking building within the Ganza property in order to help in decongesting the city roads from the excessive volume of vehicles that contribute to traffic jams daily.
For the SM City Baguio pay parking expansion project, the local chief executive asserted that the decision of the Supreme Court (SC) on the petition filed against the overall expansion of the mall is being awaited for the noble project to push through.
Currently, SM City Baguio has a total of 775 parking slots within its existing mall and its expansion project would accommodate 652 additional motor vehicles that would be parked.
The parking spaces of SM City Baguio are located underground and by locating these spaces underground, the expansion’s impact on wooded surroundings will be reduced, as will undesirable “heat island effects’ often encountered in large shopping centers. Park finders using LED have been incorporated in its design for customers to easily locate parking spaces, thereby lessening fuel consumption.
Superintendent Evilio Degay, chief of the Baguio Police Office (BCPO) Traffic Management Branch, said the realization of SM City Baguio’s mall expansion project would greatly contribute in providing alternative parking spaces for the increasing volume of vehicles that come up to the city, especially during weekends, thus, it would allow them to concentrate in anti-criminality efforts that will sustain the city’s good peace and order situation.
He said motor vehicle owners tend to park their vehicles anytime because of the inadequate parking spaces around the city as a result of its limited land area and the influx of visitors considering that there was a significant reduction in travel time from the lowlands to the city due to the opening of the 88-kilometer Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway (TPLEX).
