Suffering our own EDSA

TRAFFIC – THE logjam – as dreaded, did strike the May 18 opening of SM Telabastagan, the Sy conglomerate’s 70^th mall in the country, the fourth in Pampanga, the third in the City of San Fernando -- after SM Downtown, and SM Pampanga which the capital shares with Mexico town.

Nowhere near though was Friday’s jampacked traffic along MacArthur Highway at the San Fernando-Angeles boundary to the ultimate carmaggedon occasioned by the opening of the first real mall north of Manila -- SM City Pampanga in November 2000. That was the day that traffic literally stood still – to as far as the reaches of Lubao town to the west and Arayat to the east at the Olongapo-Gapan Road, the San Simon exit to the south and the San Rafael overpass to the north at the North Luzon Expressway, vortexed on the then single square block mall.

No SM mall opening anywhere else has ever broken that record… of traffic chaos.          

Two days before the opening of SMTB, the City of San Fernando press released and uploaded on its webpage some traffic scheme – purportedly crafted with the assistance of the UP National Center for Transportation Studies – with the purported purpose of avoiding jams and smoothening traffic flow along the area. In the scheme of things that unfolded, it was an epic failure.

For one, they could have provided at the least a pedestrian overpass so both the shoppers and the simply curious on-foot did not have to crisscross every which way mall-ward further stalling the already stalled vehicles.  

So, how many months did it take to build SMTB? So, surely a pedestrian overpass, whether concrete or steel, could have been built and completed well ahead of the mall. No, I am not saying that such overpass makes the total solution to the traffic mess. But it could have helped tremendously.

It just goes to show the absence of foresight not simply afflicting, but actually endemic in, the local government. Everybody knows the come-hither seduction of malls – an SM one, specially – on the people, the Capampangans particularly.

And all the LGU could proffer is its sorry excuse for a traffic scheme confined within a minus-one-kilometer radius of the mall, enough to contain 800 to 1000 assorted vehicles on the four-lane MacArthur Highway.

That’s one heck of a problem even if only the vehicles were passing through. The left-right turns to the circumferential road, to the Essel Park main gate, and ingress-egress to the mall itself – to its parking lot, jeepney and tricycle terminals – further complexed the already complicated traffic reality on the ground.    

ACTDOn’t

And where was the much-publicized Angeles City Traffic Development Office with the road anarchy spreading beyond the San Fernando boundary, abutting to Mount Carmel and the Land Transportation Office?

Rather stupid of me to still ask: They can’t enforce No U-Turn through the stretch of MacArthur Highway – violations happening right under the enforcers’ stubby noses – how expect them to untangle an EDSA-like traffic knot.

“Opening blues,” some wag dismissed it, just like the start of classes. So, talagang magulo.

Meniglo, mebana, ginagad la ring cabalen, quipped another, rather condescendingly, cocksure that in a week or so at most, the road would be back to “normal,” that is moderate-to-heavy-traffic-only-at-rush-hours, principally rising from the daily coming-and-going of some 4,000 workers at nearby Angeles City Industrial Park in Calibutbut, Bacolor.

Yes, the workers are an accepted given; the Capampangan though as hick or hillbilly begs total rejection. Maybe with the first SM mall in the province then, as that most horrendous of traffic displayed. Now, what is there in one more mall to get us mesmerized?

Count now all the malls here. In San Fernando: three SMs, Robinsons Starmills, Walter Mart, Vista Mall, Jumbo Jenra, Jenra-Sindalan, S&R. Throw away Puregold.

God help the Fernandinos once Megaworld’s The Capital Town residential-commercial township gets established where but a two-lane road now exists.   

Angeles City has SM Clark, Newpoint, Nepo Mall, Robinsons, Jenra, and Marquee Mall. Soon to rise: The Infinity central business district.

Lest we forget Mabalacat City with City Mall, S&R, Jenra, Puregold, and Hypermart.     

Arguably, Pampanga has the most number of malls – 20 by our count – of all provinces in the country.  

Rather than enthralled, the hordes that trooped to SMTB’s opening were curious to compare it with the other malls, to “case” it, so to speak. And maybe find where best to hang out and relax.  

Incidentally, early afternoon of that Friday opening, I got caught in traffic exiting NLEx-Angeles – with the start of a week-end sale at Marquee Mall. At SM Clark, I found parking space only at the farthest westward end near Park Inn by Radisson Clark. Going home later, I braved traffic at Dau to get to NLEx and got stuck again exiting San Fernando, the bulk of vehicles at Jose Abad Santos Avenue going to and from SM Pampanga and Robinsons Starmills.

Yeah, the malls are packed, as usual. The day no matter. Traffic about them no more moderate or heavy but snail-paced or standstill.   

Which brings us to wonder now if the Pampanga Chamber of Commerce and Industry still cries out as loud to decongest Metro Manila and bring the spoils to Pampanga.

Like we need the concomitant social costs of metropolization – in the Manila context – most manifest in the EDSA traffic as a shot in the head!

Ay, our own EDSA is already much too much a sufferance. This, referencing to the traffic situation in our cities, as much as to our hizzoner.