SO QUARRY operators, and we presume, truckers too, are thoroughly convinced of the strength of the FVR megadike to withstand the (over)load of sand and gravel of their dump trucks.
This, to advance their proposal to the Department of Public Works and Highways to use the FVR megadike as alternate route.
This, again, in the face of the impending truck ban by the Angeles City government to decongest the busy junction in Barangay Cutcut of the Porac-Angeles Road and the Circumferential Road that leads to the Clark Freeport.
This, in turn, in the wake of the presidential tongue-lashing some government officials, both appointive and elective, reportedly received after the convoy of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo coming in from yet another visit to Porac town got hopelessly stuck in traffic at the said junction.
To argue their point, the quarry operators and truckers mouthpieced by one Mike Tapang, purported quarry association big boss, fingered a six-kilometer portion of the FVR megadike that served as a connecting road to hundreds of dump trucks delivering sand, gravel and filling materials at the time of the construction of the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway.
Were the FVR megadike not strong enough, so reasoned Tapang, it would not have been opened to those dump trucks.
Some faulty reasoning there, given that only a small portion of the FVR megadike was used in the SCTEx construction, while Tapang wanted availment of the whole stretch.
And then an even sounder argument against Tapang: Concrete roads – whether municipal, provincial or national in classification – are all routinely destroyed by quarry trucks, how much more the asphalt-overlaid FVR megadike?
So Tapang added a sweetener to the quarry operators and truckers’ proposal with the commitment that they themselves would “rehabilitate the 15.3-kilometer span of the dike if the DPWH allows them to use it.”
Tapang was quoted further in media as having “assured the DPWH that the association will shoulder the repair of the dike if it is breached by heavy trucks,” that assurance already incorporated in draft of the memorandum of agreement for the truckers’ use of the mega dike forwarded to the DPWH.
Unfortunately, assurances from the quarry operators and truckers, and necessarily Tapang’s, are most unassuring, if not outright suspect, given their selfish motives and arrogant misdeeds.
Tapang has the gall to promise “rehabilitating” at their expense any breach in the FVR megadike that would arise from its use by the quarry trucks. Yet, Tapang and his ilk, have yet to contribute a single centavo as recompense for the utter destruction – with their sand and gravel overload – of the Porac-Angeles Road junction, of the Circumferential Road, indeed of the MacArthur Highway! Yeah, the quarry trucks’ unmitigated destruction of roads that has compelled a number of local government executives, notably Sta. Rita Mayor Yolly Pineda, to altogether ban them from traversing their turfs.
Why, Tapang and his cohorts, would not even do their share in the preservation of the highways by simply obeying the Anti-Overloading Law!
Witness how they hemmed and hawed, how they stretched all legal loopholes when the provincial government tried to implement Ordinance 176.
Why, indeed, those quarry truck flout all road laws, utterly disregarding those traffic lights at the Porac-Angeles junction, flaunting their bulk to bully motorists.
Quarry truckers are the most arrogantly undisciplined road users. Open the FVR megadike to quarry trucks and may God have mercy on those cyclists and motorists using it.
Keep quarry trucks out of the FVR megadike.
This, to advance their proposal to the Department of Public Works and Highways to use the FVR megadike as alternate route.
This, again, in the face of the impending truck ban by the Angeles City government to decongest the busy junction in Barangay Cutcut of the Porac-Angeles Road and the Circumferential Road that leads to the Clark Freeport.
This, in turn, in the wake of the presidential tongue-lashing some government officials, both appointive and elective, reportedly received after the convoy of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo coming in from yet another visit to Porac town got hopelessly stuck in traffic at the said junction.
To argue their point, the quarry operators and truckers mouthpieced by one Mike Tapang, purported quarry association big boss, fingered a six-kilometer portion of the FVR megadike that served as a connecting road to hundreds of dump trucks delivering sand, gravel and filling materials at the time of the construction of the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway.
Were the FVR megadike not strong enough, so reasoned Tapang, it would not have been opened to those dump trucks.
Some faulty reasoning there, given that only a small portion of the FVR megadike was used in the SCTEx construction, while Tapang wanted availment of the whole stretch.
And then an even sounder argument against Tapang: Concrete roads – whether municipal, provincial or national in classification – are all routinely destroyed by quarry trucks, how much more the asphalt-overlaid FVR megadike?
So Tapang added a sweetener to the quarry operators and truckers’ proposal with the commitment that they themselves would “rehabilitate the 15.3-kilometer span of the dike if the DPWH allows them to use it.”
Tapang was quoted further in media as having “assured the DPWH that the association will shoulder the repair of the dike if it is breached by heavy trucks,” that assurance already incorporated in draft of the memorandum of agreement for the truckers’ use of the mega dike forwarded to the DPWH.
Unfortunately, assurances from the quarry operators and truckers, and necessarily Tapang’s, are most unassuring, if not outright suspect, given their selfish motives and arrogant misdeeds.
Tapang has the gall to promise “rehabilitating” at their expense any breach in the FVR megadike that would arise from its use by the quarry trucks. Yet, Tapang and his ilk, have yet to contribute a single centavo as recompense for the utter destruction – with their sand and gravel overload – of the Porac-Angeles Road junction, of the Circumferential Road, indeed of the MacArthur Highway! Yeah, the quarry trucks’ unmitigated destruction of roads that has compelled a number of local government executives, notably Sta. Rita Mayor Yolly Pineda, to altogether ban them from traversing their turfs.
Why, Tapang and his cohorts, would not even do their share in the preservation of the highways by simply obeying the Anti-Overloading Law!
Witness how they hemmed and hawed, how they stretched all legal loopholes when the provincial government tried to implement Ordinance 176.
Why, indeed, those quarry truck flout all road laws, utterly disregarding those traffic lights at the Porac-Angeles junction, flaunting their bulk to bully motorists.
Quarry truckers are the most arrogantly undisciplined road users. Open the FVR megadike to quarry trucks and may God have mercy on those cyclists and motorists using it.
Keep quarry trucks out of the FVR megadike.
