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WHAT are good indicators of progress in a town, city or province?
Many people point to shopping malls and tall buildings because they
depict wealth and high standards of living. Do you agree?
In many areas, the malls and modern buildings
look incongruous beside squatter shanties and the narrow, pockmarked
roads around it. If the malls and tall buildings represent progress,
what do the cardboard box houses and potholes represent? Misery,
surely, but not by any stretch of the imagination can it indicate
progress.
Some people point to the luxury cars on the
street as a sign of progress because they mean affluence. But the
prosperous-looking sedans and sleek SUVs also look out-of-place
beside dilapidated jeepneys, ungainly kalesas pulled by a
haggard-looking horse, push carts, bicycles, motorcycles, half-naked
street hawkers pushing cigarettes, candies and chewing gums, and a
swarm of pedestrians that include goats, ducks, cats and askals.
Whew!
A few perceptive people point to the design and
quality of the roads and bridges and other public infrastructure as
a good indication of progress. Even the coffee shop philosophers
support this contention. They refer to a good-quality road as the
politicians’ road to fame, and the bad-quality road as their road
to perdition.
Good roads bring numerous benefits to the place
and its residents. They help decongest crowded urban centers, giving
city planners plenty of room to work out schemes that will result in
a better way of life for Filipinos.
Because the roads are part of the vital arteries
that facilitate the movement of goods and people, its design and
quality speaks of the place and its leaders. “Ang galing,”
people say when they have a smooth ride. When the road is rough and
bumpy, they usually ask: “Sino ba mayor dito?”
People also ask nasty questions when the
concrete or macadamized pavement developed cracks and craters after
a short period. “May kumita,” is a common comment.
Even without the cracks and potholes, the road
can be a death trap because of faulty design. Motorists complain of
the sharp corners, non-elevated turns and blind intersections, which
cause accidents and unnecessary loss of lives.
To make matters worse, some city planners are
either heartless or plain incompetent. There are no alternative
routes to the main boulevard interspersed with numerous
intersections. Driving through is like passing a gauntlet. Consider
yourself lucky if you get through without incident.
Motorists are at the mercy of a traffic aide
armed with a hand towel, which he uses to direct the flow. He waves
you towards the left, the right or straight ahead. Sometimes, he
waves several fingers and points to his pocket.
There is no argument that poor design and bad
quality lead to accidents. In Leyte, several people were killed when
a funeral procession passed a bridge that collapsed. It was a
disaster waiting to happen. “The dead man inside the hearse was
lucky,” a local official was quoted in press reports as saying.
“The funeral car has just passed through when the bridge
collapsed.”
Poorly constructed roads and bridges exacerbate
the country’s dismal accident record. The Traffic Management Group
said in the first nine months of this year 578 people died in 10,628
accidents. Other causes of accidents included drunk driving,
mechanical defects, overspeeding and use of cell phone while
driving. Of course, if you’re careful you can avoid accidents
despite the bad roads and brutish behavior of other drivers. But
nobody is spared by the monstrous traffic jams caused by these
factors. In several major streets, even the lights in the
intersections are not synchronized and you spend a lot of time
waiting for the light to turn green. In other crossroads, there are
no lights at all. You are at the mercy of a traffic aide directing
the flow with a hand towel. Nobody knows, if the hand towel is
standard gear, but it is widely used. It surely helps the textile
industry.
The hand towels definitely do not indicate we
have a modern traffic system in the same manner that the malls and
tall buildings don’t represent progress. Our roads are narrow and
pock-marked, the intersections don’t have traffic lights, the
traffic officers use hand towels to direct the flow, what does it
mean? They keep reminding us we live in a third world country.
palaciosjp@yahoo.com
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