Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan has done one swell of a job widening MacArthur Highway and putting up that roundabout at the entry to Clark – serendipitously timed for the APEC senior ministers meeting at the Freeport last February, and thus with readily available funds from the DPWH as well as the Clark Development Corp. and sense of urgency impacted upon the constructors.
To EdPam’s sole credit though is the enforcement of regulations to make sure the highway serves the very reason for its widening – ease traffic flow. Not increase economic activity upon it – as was done in Apalit – by locating thereat vulcanizing shops, tricycle terminals, furniture showrooms, or expanding the parking spaces fronting commercial buildings – all resulting to contraction of vehicular traffic space. Effecting an absolute negation of the purpose for which the road was expanded.
In Angeles City, parallel parking was imposed along the highway. Violators are penalized. Vehicles impounded. No pakiusap entertained.
The rotunda at Marisol was rid of the virtual jeepney terminal sited at the entry to the subdivision, easing the flow of traffic tremendously.
What was started in front of the Angeles University Foundation, ridiculed as “EYA’s folly” – the iron fence at the median of the highway – to prevent jaywalking and motorists from turning anywhere at will, has been replicated right at the northern tip of Abacan Bridge, in front of Robinsons up to the entry to Sta. Maria church in Balibago. To very good results. It helps though that pedestrian overpasses are available near AUF and the Systems Plus College.
Road lighting is a continuing activity of the Pamintuan administration. Light posts are now being put up at the Circumferential Road, even as the widening of the road is yet to be fully completed.
Road discipline – primarily among jeepney drivers – has become a 24/7 imposition. Night driving now less risky with vehicles with no headlights routinely apprehended.
At the core of the city’s traffic nexus is the Angeles City Traffic Management Board composed of esteemed locals in charge of studies and policies for the continuing improvement of traffic.
Add to that a strong feedback mechanism and quick response to road problems – EdPam’s cellphone and facebook account are forever open, the Angeles City Traffic Enforcement and Management Office enforcers in high profile deployment and actively engaged in their assigned duties.
At last Friday’s regular breakfast with media, EdPam disclosed that the city has collected over P1 million in fines for traffic violations.
“I am not happy. It shows that drivers have not been instilled with road discipline yet,” Hizzoner said, but still hoping for the day when his city will have zero fines and find no need for any traffic enforcer.
Still and all, the traffic situation in Angeles City has improved – awesomely – in orderliness, in ease, to the general satisfaction of commuters and motorists.
On the other hand, the streets of the City of San Fernando are a study in anarchy.
The Baliti stretch of MacArthur Highway is back to its darkest state.
Jeepneys as a matter of course don’t put on their headlights, even in the blackest of nights. Traffic lights are routinely ignored.
Motorcycles and tricycles, zipping past red lights by taking the outermost lanes even in busy junctions.
At the Sindalan and SACOP intersections, PUJs stop or go not on the red or green of the traffic signals but on the presence or absence of passengers waiting there.
The total breakdown of road sanity obtains at Gen. Hizon Avenue in downtown San Fernando soon as the sun sets.
Both sides of Baluyut Bridge become padyak-sikel terminals leaving no more than a single lane at the median for all traffic, vehicular and pedestrian.
The strip by the side of the Metropolitan Cathedral, one-way at daytime, turns free-forall — wheeled food stalls, tri-wheelers, vehicles of all types, calesas, pedestrians competing for every inch of the already-constricted space.
Madness rules, disorder reigns in the streets of San Fernando. And nothing is being done about it. Save for the perfunctory “studies are being conducted” at every mention of the problem during press conferences at city hall.
How Mayor Edwin Santiago find peace and contentment, aye, pride, with his Most Outstanding Mayor Award in view of this nightmare, is beyond the realm of reason.
Maybe it’s time to bring Attorney-General Ramsey Ocampo back to city hall. Remember how his Task Force Habitat brought order in the streets of San Fernando at the time of Mayor Oscar Rodriguez?
Or better yet, as the growing clamor in the city puts it: Mayor Oca 2016.
