(Originally published in the Feb. 12 to 18, 2012 issue of the Baguio Chronicle
--- a weekly newspaper based in Baguio City, Philippines ---
by Sly L. Quintos, Associate Editor.)
“BEFORE any major development occurs in the city, we would like to consult the people; we would like to hear from you,” former City Architect Joseph Alabanza told a group of Baguio businessmen following the “experimental closure” of Session Road two weeks ago. ‘Pedestrianization’ proponents prefer to call it “opening Session Road to people”.
Baguio City Mayor Mauricio Domogan approved the nine-hour ‘pedestrianization’ of Session Road as part of a forum called Recreating a People-Friendly Session Road held at the University of the Cordilleras. It lasted from 3 o’clock in the afternoon until midnight.
Prominently led by book and school supplies store owner Nelia Cid, about 25 business people from Session Road gathered last week at a nearby hotel to compare notes, fearing that the ‘pedestrianization’ of the city’s main thoroughfare will push them to bankruptcy and eventual extinction.
“Session Road is central business district . . . it is strictly for business, not for ‘pedestrianization’ . . . ‘predestrianizing’ is very idealistic but not applicable to Session Road,” said the elderly Cid. “We will be losing a lot of business or profit; Session Road is not meant for promenading but purely business and profit.”
“As President of the Session Road Business Association, I have to protect Session Road (from those wanting to kill our business),” she added.
“Session Road is not for people; it is for business! Improve Burnham Park (instead); Burnham Park is for people,” added burger chain franchisee, hotelier and grocery owner Mike del Rosario screamed in his usual world-class Toastmasters International’s decades of training in public speaking, as he turned the tables on Alabanza.
“No definite decisions have been made insofar as (the ‘pedestrianization’ of) Session Road is concerned,” Alabanza assured. “We will of course initiate a citizens’ participation in decision-making; that is a very important component insofar as getting people interested, especially when they affect you or where you reside or where you do business and of course, the whole city of Baguio.”
“What we are trying to do is get feedback from people like you; we are getting as much information from the public; we are going around asking people how they feel about ‘pedestrianizing’ Session Road,” he added. “We opened that portion of Session Road to people just to experience what ‘pedestrianizing’ can do.”
Alabanza said that Session Road has become just a passage way between the market and SM. “A glorified passage way,” he declared.
According to him, ‘pedestrianizing’ would eventually “make Session Road a destination area and making it a destination area would mean that we will be attracting and keeping the pedestrians in Session Road and get them patronize the businesses in Session Road”.
“The intention is to make Session Road as dynamic as possible so that people are destined to go to Session Road and not destined to go to SM,” he said as he mourned how the city’s population has swelled.
“We should realize that Baguio is over-developed; we have problems on solid waste management, we have problems on water, traffic, pollution because of the very rapid migration into Baguio,” he said. “There are limits to growth; the carrying capacity of Baguio is lost.”
“We have one of the biggest ratio of vehicles and pedestrians,” he said. “Let us try to work out something now,” he begged the businessmen.
Baguio City Police’s Traffic Management Division Chief Allan Logan lamented in another forum the irreversible increase of motor vehicles clogging practically all the streets of the city.
According to Logan, the number of registered motor vehicles in Baguio has reached 38,000 compared to 36,000 ten years ago. Of the 38,000 carbon-emitting vehicles, 27,8000 are privately-owned while 11,000 are public utility vehicles and of which 6,000 are jeeps and the rest are taxis.
Added to the 38,000 motor vehicles fighting their way through every square inch of the roads is close to half million people now populating Baguio, all in a never-increasing 49 square kilometers of land.
“These motor vehicles traverse and converge at the central business district --- the common point of destination --- and as a result, traffic becomes heavy,” Logan said.
During a one-on-one meeting between Mayor Domogan and Architect Alabanza last month, the latter bluntly told the former that “the conflict between the pedestrians and the vehicular traffic must be resolved now”. This writer was privy to that meeting.
Alabanza told the Baguio Chronicle that the Saint Louis University has offered to do a feasibility study on the ‘pedestrianization’ of Session Road. “I am hoping that other universities will come in also to do research on the effects of the ‘pedestrianization’ to the business in the area,” he said.
He narrated that he, as the City Architect initiated in 1972 a Policy Plan for Baguio “in terms of what we thought would be the ‘future’ of Baguio”. And “one policy that came out very strongly said that something has to be done already because of the pollution in the downtown area, particularly Session Road, not necessarily the whole of Baguio,” he said.
“We have not identified growth areas in the region to the extent that people all come to Baguio,” he opined. “Growth areas to allow migrants to go to instead of only to Baguio; the congressmen should pour in funds to these growth areas; this way, it will reduce the migration to Baguio.”
Meanwhile, Baguio Cathedral’s Reverend Lorenzo Abella said he finds the idea to ‘pedestrianize’ Session Road as “interesting because it can bring back a clean (from pollution) Session Road”.
“But of course, if that happens, there will be drawbacks,” he admitted.
“People must come up with a consensus; they have valid reasons; it is nice to listen to their objections or suggestions,” he said.*
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