Saving the flyover, traffic be damned

 

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO -- “It is high time the law against overloading is strictly implemented as it prematurely deteriorates our roads and bridges including flyovers and put the safety of other motorists in jeopardy.”

Thus, spoke DPWH Senior Undersecretary Emil K. Sadain at the reopening of the modular steel flyover at the intersection of Lazatin Ave. and Jose Abad Santos Ave. here last April 18 after it was closed for total rehabilitation for over two months.

In less than 20 hours from its opening, Sadain’s call took urgency after a delivery truck and a tourist bus successively struck the overhead gantry at the approaches of the flyover put there precisely to strictly implement the exclusive use of light vehicle.

Buses and trucks, and other heavy vehicles are expressly prohibited to use the flyover “in order to prolong the service life of the structure.”

 

Saving the structure, most apparently, is the one and only reason behind the rehabilitation of the flyover. Conveniently forgotten is the very purpose for its being – to ease traffic flow in that strategic point of busy JASA to and from the provinces of Bataan and Zambales.

 

By banning heavy vehicles from using the Lazatin flyover and the older one at the junction of JASA and MacArthur Highway some 500 meters east of the former, traffic has not been contained but even spread through the national highway northward to the St. Jude junction, where trucks and buses make the U-turn back to JASA, beneath the flyover, onward to western Central Luzon.

 

The DPWH very well knows the volume of heavy vehicles traversing JASA, being a main artery in the transport of goods between Manila and Bataan, home to an export processing zone and gas refinery, and Zambales, home to the Subic Freeport. Not to mention the over 2,000 dump trucks daily transporting sand from the quarry sites of Bacolor and Porac in Pampanga to the metropolis.

Instead of taking the bull by the horn, so to speak, the DPWH took it by the tail.

The need for a heavy-duty high-capacity viaduct, the DPWH addressed with a flimsy flyover restricted to light vehicles not exceeding 20 tons and 2.75 meters in vertical clearance.

Hence, the DPWH solution made the problem even worse.