Easier and less violent car parking style  

By Gerry Garcia

WONDERING and rather disappointed through the years over why Lingayen, the province’s capital coastal town facing the historic Lingayen Gulf, has remained rustic, many people are now beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. The municipality under the mayorship of Ernesto Castañeda has now a common bus terminal, rehabilitated its markets and at the moment is having its decades-old municipal building undergo a P16-M facelifting, presently to be augmented by a P5-M share from Speaker JdV and another P5-M from 2nd District Rep. Amado Espino Jr. The town, catapulted from fourth to first class by more commercial investments within the decade, is now ripe for cityhood.

The long stretch of Maramba Boulevard serving as welcoming gateway to the provincial capitol has been refurbished and made more alluring to visitors and tourists.

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Traffic build-up in downtown  Lingayen has been tremendous and the town hall just a few  steps away from the public market is practically so caught in the middle . . . that projected moves to give the munisipyo a more meaningful face-lifting should include plans for more organized parking in the area.

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Binmaley, another growing rustic community half a dozen kms away from Lingayen, is starting to find itself in the same traffic situation as Lingayen’s. The good news coming from the 2nd Pangasinan Engineering District head Rodolfo Dion however, should be relief for private motorists on cross-country trips: The Lingayen-Binmaley diversion road will be completed before December this year.

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Here in Dagupan City the age-old problem of lack of parking space is, or seems to be, neglected by concerned authorities.  In heavily traveled main roads here, especially AB Fernandez Avenue at east end of Quintos Bridge, parking style has been monotonously the parallel-no double parking stuff.

The diagonal parking style has not been adopted either because the POSO authorities are too lazy or they just don’t know enough how to do it. All it takes to get the style working is to paint diagonal lines to the sidewalk to indicate the directions of diagonal parking — slanting not parallel to the sidewalk.

Motorists would find it easier getting their cars into diagonal parking and getting them out of it than if they were to park parallel to the curb. And considerably more cars could be accommodated this way than otherwise. And there would be no need for disgruntled motorists to curse or shoot each other.

Best of all it would spell the end for car-towing mad dogs often on the prowl for “violators” preying on hapless motorists parking their cars in dubious “towing” areas.

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/here-and-there/)

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