Just a nice quiet afternoon on the Boulevard. And if you’re in a car, or a pedicab, or a bus, you’ll have plenty of time to enjoy the view of the sea. With traffic like this, you won’t be going anywhere soon.
Probably there was a parade, or a checkpoint, or some other event that caused this tie-up, but it happens all too often. In some places, at some times, it’s almost routine to be stuck like this in heat and exhaust fumes.
Maybe it’s only for a minute or two– but a minute or two is a long time when you’re deafened by roaring engines while you sweat, and choke.
Dumaguete has almost doubled in population in the last few years, and tripled or quadrupled it’s number of motorcycles; but the streets haven’t gotten any wider, nor have any attempts been made to add more roads feeding in and out of town.
And there are no traffic lights at all, and none seem to be on the way. Instead we have “traffic aides” who sometimes help, but sometimes cause more problems than they solve, if they are actually on duty in the street, not standing on one side to stay out of the hot sun.
More and more “No Parking” signs appear, to try to at least keep clear the little cement that exists- but these signs are simply ignored, and no tickets are issued to enforce them.
There is a bypass road under construction to keep through traffic out of the city, (overloaded trucks from the south heading north) but this project has been “under construction” for years now, with no end in sight.
The problem is obviously the infrastructure of the city and it’s surroundings, and it’s not only traffic that suffers. As more subdivisions are added, existing water pressure drops; as more land is covered with cement, there is less land to soak up rain; rivers rise; floods increase.
All these problems could find solutions with careful management and a great deal of money. The management can be found, but the money is another question- it just isn’t available from any source in the amounts needed.
These problems, however, will eventually solve themselves. When the city becomes totally unlivable, people will stop coming to live here; and in the end, those who can, will go somewhere else. Can’t we find a better solution?
