WHILE waiting for those wider roads, super bridges, and sleek LRTs to be built – which will take two to three years, assuming there are no hidden delays – the way to ease traffic now is to remove fly-by-night contractors and their puny crews of a few men working with toothpicks. They dig up streets, then leave them gaping like sinkholes for months on end, who cares about the consequences?
From a stray cat’s point of view, one lane of diggings that stretch two to three blocks is enough to stall traffic in a city where road space is just not enough to accommodate trucks, taxis, jeepneys, buses, private cars, motorcycles, tricycles, and pedestrians on one lane going and one lane coming. The laws of physics will not allow four-wheelers, three-wheelers, two-wheelers, and two legs to fit on a two-lane street as they stream in from all directions, not to mention the traffic lights that are not there or not functioning (and even if they were, who’s the driver who’ll pay attention when things have come to a standstill?). Go ahead, blame the serious stuff, but we cannot wait for JICA’s prediction to come true – R6 billion of fuel wasted each day due to traffic – when we could easily keep out the con men who do not have the equipment, funds and manpower to finish the work fast, get out of the way and let the cars through!
I asked the contractor of the Ayala bridge retrofitting how he was able to finish on time. His answer was as basic as 1-2-3, A-B-C: “Work 24/7. Resources.”
Do we need an engineer to explain?
I’m glad to read that the DPWH secretary will not let ”pipitsugin” (cheap!) contractors hold up projects that cost millions in taxpayers’ money and millions more in fuel wasted and human energy expended for nothing. If Mark Villar published a blacklist of pseudo-contractors who should be confined to digging trenches for the army without pay, he’d make his mark in a hurry. Just Du it, Mark! (Jullie Y. Daza)
