By Dolly Yasa
BACOLOD City – A new traffic plan will be implemented here on Dec 12, 2022 in preparation for the holiday rush.
This, as the Bacolod Sangguniang Panlungsod adopted during their regular session Wednesday three resolutions of the Bacolod Traffic Authority Council (BTAC).
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 southbound cargo trucks from the Reclamation Area going to Araneta Street; and an amendment to 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 Mayor Alfredo ‘Albee’ Benitez Wednesday evening.
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 to its meeting to discuss the traffic plan.
He 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.
Espino further said that he 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 also said that 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.
Espino lamented that 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.
He said that “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.”
