Road management

ROAD management needs to be planned out, especially in highly-urbanized cities.

Not one city’s road management approaches could be applicable to another city. Each community is different. There may be similarities but the application of road management could never be the same.

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It can never be said that the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) is the appropriate body to effectively help another town or city or province address their traffic management problems.

And as far as my active mind could recall, only Bayani Fernando, Rody Duterte and Dick Gordon are passionate about road management and have achieved success.

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In Cebu, the late Sammy Darza studied how to improve vehicle movement. This was in the late 1980s. The study was for Cebu City only. It did not include Mandaue and Lapu-lapu.

The local government later organized a traffic operations unit that was given a free hand to impose discipline on the road. You could not bargain your penalty with politicians.

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The Cebuano man did it alone in the beginning. I came to observe him. There was no book to follow. It was just the man’s passion and patience in finding what was effective for Cebu City’s traffic.

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Former Marikina City mayor Bayani “BF” Fernando did his homework patiently and with passion. He succeeded because there was never a bargaining process for violators, too.

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After Bayani Fernando “graduated” as mayor of Marikina, he went back to private life. That was the time someone eyed me to help him in some projects.

He shared to me how he succeeded in Marikina, and specifically what he did to make traffic flow in his city.

I was amazed. They sounded easy and practical.

I humbly shared to him that I was a member of the Traffic Study Group of Bacolod and our team did so many road management improvements nearly three decades ago.

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Most road accidents and incidents are caused by motorcycles. There are also road mishaps involving four-wheeled vehicles and heavy loaded trucks.

Recently I was having a late lunch at Kimboys Ungka. The driver of a canter truck – loaded with ukay-ukay sacks that doubled the height of the truck – steered the wheel swiftly to the right from the Diversion Road onward to Pavia, Iloilo.

The truck curved, swerved, swung, and fell on its side. It was the science of inertia the driver was ignorant of.

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I was told by a friend about a couple crossing the pedestrian lane along Diversion Road one morning. A sports car driven by a young man hit them. They died. It was a tragedy.

Let us do something to improve Iloilo City’s road management./PN

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