The Dumaguete City government has started to experiment its new one-way scheme to improve traffic especially in the downtown area.
Mayor Felipe Antonio Remollo said Friday that the dry run this weekend on the proposed traffic re-routing scheme is also part of the city’s preparation for the upcoming implementation of a bridge retro-fitting project.
The City has to give way to the Department of Public Works & Highways for the bridge project and thus the need to re-route traffic in the city, he said.
While admitting that the traffic problem in Dumaguete is getting worse, the mayor said “the bigger and more permanent solution to that would be really the instituting a truck ban and giving a moratorium to warehouses to be relocated outside the downtown area”.
Work on the government center in the outskirts barangay of Bajumpandan, which is also seen to help ease traffic in the city, will also be started soon, he said.
The City also plans to initiate a towing service so that wrongully-parked vehicles will be towed and fined, the Mayor added.
“And this is part of a grand plan to spread the development not just within the downtown area but into the barangay areas including the towns of Sibulan, Valencia, Bacong and other municipalities,” Remollo said.
The plan to transfer the port to either Bacong or Siaton will also help lessen the traffic flow in the city, according to him. The truck ban, the mayor said, will come later as the city would like to take things one at a time.
Businessmen, however, have already been consulted on the truck ban, which he said will be a continuous and not intermittent activity once implemented outside of the 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. window.
He admitted that trailer trucks and container vans contribute to traffic because of the narrow streets of Dumaguete.
The Mayor also assured there is a back-up plan to support the traffic scheme, such as full implementation of the ban on parking along the national highway.
This was successful when the city tried it for two weeks and it had positive results, he said.
Meanwhile, Mayor Remollo disclosed that he personally followed up on a project funded by the national government of some P300-million for the construction of the Junob-Cadawinonan diversion road up to the bridge.
The project was stopped previously after the bridge gave in due to heavy flooding.
Remollo said the project is being implemented double time with him making sure the road would be 20 meters wide.
Those who will be affected by the project have agreed already to negotiations to give way to the road construction, Remollo disclosed.
Property owners will be paid for their fences that will be affected by the road widening and so there is no need to go to court anymore for expropriation proceedings, he said.
Others whose lands will also be affected by the project will be paid by the national government as the DPWH has funding for that, he added. (JFP)
