Bacolod City – The Sangguniang Panlungsod adopted three resolutions of the Bacolod Traffic Authority Council (BTAC) proposing a new traffic plan in Bacolod City starting Monday, during its regular session on Wednesday.
The resolutions include the proposed experimental implementation of a one-way scheme along Lacson, Aguinaldo and Gatuslao streets in the city; a total truck ban and re-routing of south bound cargo trucks from the Reclamation Area going to Araneta Street; and amendment of the truck ban time, among others.
The traffic plan was presented by Bacolod Traffic Authority Office (BTAO) head Police Major Junjie Liba during a press conference with the mayor at the Bacolod City Government Center Wednesday, where the three proposed strategies they plan to carry out this month were discussed.
Bacolod Councilor Al Victor Espino, chairman of the SP Committee on Transportation and Traffic, said he voted with reservations and manifested that he is 100 percent certain that he was not invited by BTAC in its meeting to discuss the traffic plan.
Espino said he has not received any official notice of their meeting so he cannot defend their request before the City Council. That is why when the motion was passed, he expressed reservations.
“I was apprehensive in defending it because l do not know anything about it. We do not even know about their proposed routes,” he said.
He already saw the traffic plan in a news outlet on social media (before their scheduled session) which made it appear that the SP had already acted on the proposal of the BTAC, he added.
Espino said they tend to forget that the BTAC is only a recommendatory body and that it is still the SP through the Committee on Transportation and Traffic that will ratify or will have the final say on any traffic plan. He does not understand why the BTAC did not communicate with him.
But this will be the last time he will allow something like this to happen, with all due respect to Mayor Alfredo Abelardo Benitez, the head of BTAC, he added.
The BTAC is proposing to implement a one-way scheme along the streets of Lacson, Aguinaldo, and Gatuslao.
Aguinaldo street will be a one-way road on a south to north direction, with diagonal parking allowed along the east side of the street.
Gatuslao street will be a one-way road going north to south, with diagonal parking allowed on the west side only.
Vehicles going east to west, from Lacson to Aguinaldo streets, will only be allowed to pass through twelfth, fourteenth, sixteenth, eighteenth, twenty second, twenty third and twenty fifth streets. Diagonal parking will be allowed along the north side of those streets.
Those coming from Aguinaldo to Lacson will be allowed to pass through thirteenth, fifteenth, seventeenth, nineteenth, twenty-first, twenty-fourth streets.
According to the BTAC, it will impose a 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. truck-ban with no window hour for all trucks passing through the Circumferential Road. There are only 14 exemptions to the truck-ban as stated by City Ordinance 542.
There are also proposals to clamp and tow illegally parked vehicles around the city. This strategy is yet to be finalized with the city’s third party contractor and will be implemented once everything is in place. (Chrysee Simllano via The Visayan Daily Star (TVDS), photo courtesy of TVDS)