Decongest Pampanga

FOR SO long, we cabalens have held this conceit of Pampanga being the best, if not the only, alternative to Metro Manila.

No less than the highly esteemed Pampanga Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PamCham) has, for as long, articulated this pride-of-place in the calls for the decongestion of the metropolis by relocating to Pampanga which was made most manifest in those tarps that mushroomed all over the Jose Abad Santos Avenue a few years back.

Why, only last February, former president and at that time not-yet-House-speaker Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo herself declared Pampanga as the “best alternative to Metro Manila,” whereby launched the Pampanga Megalopolis Plan (PMP) that, she said, has been allotted an initial P1.724 billion in the General Appropriations Act of 2018.

In that same GMA event, foremost architect Felino Palafox who crafted the PMP presented its final draft to Gov. Lilia Pineda. Oh, how the local business community and LGUs lapped up the prospect of Pampanga being niched among the tiger economies of the Asia-Pacific region.

And only last month, the imperative of Pampanga as alternative to Metro Manila found the greatest urgency with the Xiamen airlines incident at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

With practically all the flights, both domestic and international, diverted to the Clark airport, national attention tilted heaviest towards this side of the decongestion divide.

Carpe diem. PamCham president Jess Nicdao called on LGUs to seize the opportunity out of the metropolis’ adversity: “Strategize” to meet the influx of businesses head-on, grow and prosper, he hailed.

By accident of geography – smack right in the very heart of Central Luzon, the gateway to the North, etc. – Pampanga makes indeed the ideal alternative to Metro Manila.

The ideal though gets easily shot down with the real, the all too real.

Only two Fridays back, Pampanga – specifically the cities of Angeles, Mabalacat and San Fernando – did not make alternative any, but actually made Metro Manila, at its worst. Gridlocked – for hours – in monstrous traffic jams.

Ordeal

It can’t get any more experiential, ay, stressful, than my own ordeal.

September 7. Fetched the wife from the Clark airport at 4:45 p.m. Moderate to heavy traffic at Circumferential Road on Koreatown. Turned back to the Clark perimeter road and right to Malabanas, bumper-to-bumper traffic going to Hensonville, all the way to Pampanga Market. Right to Ospital ning Angeles, then Nepo Subd. Build-up along Holy Mary Memorial Park, squeaked through a gap in the traffic standstill along the Angeles-Porac Road and crossed to Proverbsville area. Entered Villa Teresa (Angeles Electric gate) and wheezed through row of stately mansions to the southern gate to Sto. Rosario. Carmaggedon started before the Carmelite monastery all the way through SM Telabastagan, to the crossing to Calibutbut along MacArthur Highway.

Multiple wheeler transport exiting Coca-Cola plant blocked all lanes of MacArthur Highway. The traffic light at Balite crossing rendered useless.

Respite for three kilometers, until Sindalan crossing where southbound traffic went beyond the BIR regional office. Stopped anew at the Del Rosario junction, barely 400 meters from Sindalan. Stop-and-go until total stop before the SACOP crossing, the traffic lights again inutile.

Snail paced from there – enormous volume of vehicles – through Vista Mall and Walter Mart to the Lazatin Blvd.-MacArthur Highway junction.

St. Jude home at 7:05 p.m. Two hours and 20 minutes. Distance through MacArthur Highway from Clark to my place is some 25 kilometers. With my detours, make that 30 kilometers at most.

And I was even luckier than those who opted to take the North Luzon Expressway. Traffic standing still there for hours with accidents at both the southbound and northbound lanes in the vicinity of Beverly subdivision and Lakeshore.

On any day, time travel between San Fernando and Angeles City – all of 17 kilometers – takes an hour on average. It used to be 35 minutes at most. I know, I have been driving this route almost daily over 10 years now.

It’s a daily ordeal. Compound it more whenever any of the four SM malls in the province, Marquee, Robinsons, S & R, even Jenra and Walter-Mart hold their sales!

As it stands, Pampanga makes no better alternative to Metro Manila. It is the metropolis now. The better call is to decongest Pampanga.