Here and There
Dagupan’s unfinished CR (not Comfort Room)
By Gerry Garcia
THE so-called new circumferential road intended to ease traffic congestion in streets within the city proper, had been expected to be linked directly to the de Venecia diversion highway’s end in Lucao from its initial Dawel-Pantal stretch. This was city Mayor BSL’s original plan in keeping the circumferential road really and truly circumferential. Without a hitch. Or deviation of any kind.
The deviation, however, from Lim’s original plan resulted from DPWH regional director Fidel Ginez’s decision to extend the Dawel-Pantal road further to circumvent the flourishing CSI warehouse mall in Lucao, allegedly backed by Speaker JdV from whose yearly fund the cost of building the CR is drawn from.
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The circumferential road (RC), to be brutally frank, if built according to the Ginez-JDV blueprint to include a stretch extending around CSI would be a dent to BSL’s vision of a perfect circumferential or circular road BUT . . . is far from deviating from the real intention of building the circumferential road which is to ease traffic congestion within the city proper. And the horrid traffic stall in front of the CSI mall also happens to be within the city proper!
The major hitch here is that the de Venecia diversion highway’s construction was begun BEFORE the CSI Warehouse in Lucao was born and the area there was then relatively traffic -free.
The only practical way to solve the problem and help avoid a head-on collision between JDV and BSL, as we honestly see it, is to reconstruct the Lucao end of the de Venecia highway so that it would end up at the point where it merges with the proposed extension of the Dawl-Pantal road — at the CSI area. In view of which again, we would propose another project undertaking which, we painfully know, would cost immense time and expenditure: building a fly-over above the traffic-stricken CSI -Lucao road to connect the end of the proposed de Venecia extension to that of the Dawel-Pantal road.
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There are gradually flourishing communities in central Pangasinan today with not a few aiming for city status, like Lingayen and Manaoag, that the need is being felt for a revised highway system in the area, something that would avert, for instance, complication of traffic build-up in the growing municipalities.
It’s about time, we think, the DPWH directors in the region stopped twiddling their thumbs and buckle down to work.
They should know it’s their business to see to it that the national roads, including the provincial ones that they build extend between, not through cities and growing towns, to spare long-distance private car motorists from the bother of driving through messy traffic and even adding to the problem of congestion in the streets.
Fact is that most congestion gripping streets in Urdaneta City, including those of Dagupan and San Carlos, are often the result of heavy traffic worsened by out-of-town motorists driving through … because there are no diversion roads.
It may be a long shot expecting the DPWH to toe the line . . . considering its negative impressions on the long suffering driving public. Just the same we’ve not given up hope yet.
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February 24, Friday, marks the 20th anniversary of People Power I and the day here, as most probably elsewhere, passed by unnoticed with no placard-toting trouble-makers bad-mouthing Administration and over-acting because there were no roving tv cameramen around and our radio commentators, while acknowledging the significance of People Power I here, were noncommittal to what was going on at the Edsa Shrine and elsewhere in Metro Manila.
The Manila scene, as usual was not exactly tumultuous but artificial to the point of tempting only a few tv cameramen hungering for sensational scoops to take notice.
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