"MUCH HAVE been said about the trees, I hope people will also be mindful of the rights of the general public to faster travel time and to be able to buy cheaper vegetables and other farm products from Central Luzon and Baguio."
Thus, one Romeo Momo, reportedly undersecretary of public works and highways, trivialized the cutting of trees along MacArthur Highway into a choice between environmental concerns and cheaper consumer goods.
Offhand, I am tempted to state – at the risk of being sued for libel – that this Momo is bobo. Plainly, he thinks of global warming as no more than the alumuom emitted by the hot asphalt he is used to in building those roads that ever get rutted at the first rainfall.
I have to hold back – calling him bobo – and allow him some benefit of the doubt, given that he spoke on the basis of the inputs provided him by his regional director Alfredo Tolentino. As it is said G-I-G-O: garbage in, garbage out. This instance though, I would rather believe as a matter of G-A-G-O: garbage accepted, garbage outed.
The widening of the of the 200-kilometer MacArthur Highway, which stretches from Caloocan City to La Union, would speed up travel time from about four hours to about two hours in the whole stretch of the road, so parroted Tolentino.
So he laid out the premise of Momo’s pronounced (il)logic, thus: "Trucks carrying vegetables, rice and meat products are the ones mostly using the MacArthur Highway to avoid paying the toll fees at the North Luzon Expressway. Savings in fuel cost would redound to the lowering of the prices of vegetable coming from Baguio."
Central Luzon is known as the rice granary of the Philippines, so Tolentino emphasized as though to impact some more logic to his position, and went on calling the MacArthur Highway as the "busiest road in Central Luzon, other than the NLEx." Thus, "traffic gridlock often hit areas that still have two lanes measuring three meters wide."
This Tolentino is shotful of contradictions.
Not too long ago, he was reported in the papers saying there was no need any more to expand MacArthur Highway from the City of San Fernando stretch as the traffic there is already greatly reduced with the NLEx and the SCTEx in operation. The megadike too, if I may add.
Now he is saying otherwise. Which is which, Tolentino? You’re wishy-washyness there could be (mis)construed as the onset of amentia, or worse, even dementia.
Okay, I grant – arguendo — that vegetable trucks from Baguio traverse MacArthur Highway. This as a matter of convenience, true. But not so much as to save from the high toll fees of the NLEx. These trucks use the roads late in the evening – when traffic is most scant – to reach their bagsakan in Manila before the break of dawn. A most minimal, if any, need for road widening there.
As to the rice trucks, has it occurred to Tolentino that the rice granary that is Central Luzon is localized in Nueva Ecija? And to take the grains to Metro Manila, it is the Maharlika Highway not MacArthur that the trucks use?
Think, Tolentino, think. Before passing garbage to Momo.
Think, Momo, think, Before mouthing whatever Tolentino feeds you. You ain’t bobo, ain’t you?
