By Danilo P. Padua, PhD
Every year during the Christmas holiday season, traffic is a big problem in Baguio, a huge challenge to surmount not only by local authorities but also the flocking tourists and local residents as well.
Because of the above, locals have to travel to other places or just have no desire to stray outside of their homes. Mercifully, this somehow lightens the horrendous, choking traffic congestion in the city.
The 2023 holiday season was no exception. Imagine traversing less than 1 km at the city center in one hour, which I experienced more than once since I had to guide some visitors from as far as Mindanao.
That is a lot of time lost for the visitors. Instead of more time to enjoy what the city could offer, they were mumbling some justifiable “complaints”. In the process, they have also reduced time to spend their hard-saved vacation money for local products. Or, going to restos of their choice.
Surely, this means reduced income from tourists.
The easing of the traffic problem should be a priority of the Baguio City government. The traffic jams experienced by the city during prolonged holidays will soon be felt during the periods outside of the said holidays. The purchasing power of many local residents, and for that matter Filipinos in general, have increased tremendously. They can not be prevented from pursuing their cherished dream of buying their own cars, motorbikes and others.
This definitely put pressure on the traffic condition.
Requiring people to have their own garage as a requisite for buying their own vehicles, as was already attempted, will simply not work due to innumerable reasons. Many people in advance countries such as in Western Europe, own cars but do not have their own private garages.
Tourists coming to Baguio can not be prevented as well from using their own cars, as it is more convenient for travel especially when travelling as a family or with some friends. They can only be advised to leave their cars behind.
Given such scenario, promoting tourism in Baguio is something like, “damn if you do, damn if you won’t”.
That is, the more Baguio is mentioned, the more tourists will come. Then traffic woes will heighten. Conversely, the less Baguio is promoted-maybe because there are no new activities, no new attractions, no new improvements, etc- the less number of visitors come in. Then, lower income for local businesses will be realized, and city coffers will become a little impoverished.
Is it a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea? Of course not. It’s a matter of a more holistic approach to address the dilemma on hand.
The city, I think, is not really wanting on proffered solutions. For instance, it has thought of coming up with parking areas for tourists’ vehicles way before they reach Baguio. It’s good but the preliminary groundworks and actual implementation plans were not in place, so it was not good enough.
Last month, the city administration was able to convince some schools to open their parking spaces for visitors. Some positively responded. Great, but they can only offer minimal spaces. Besides, if this set up continues, some unscrupulous people, or those with devilish intentions might take advantage of this resulting to damages, destructions or disappearances of school properties.
To prevent such possibilities, more personnel such as security personnel including those from the local PNP will have to be deployed forcing the city or even the school administration to cough up with additional budget. This could be difficult as this financial consideration may not be an integral part of their approved annual appropriation.
There was a plan before by one of the universities in the city to build a multistory parking with the Burnham park area that could accommodate 3,000 cars at a time, if am not mistaken. It was presented to the city government. Apparently it was shelved, or maybe it is still being thoroughly studied for its implementability.
So back to the drawing board.
When the ordinance to give free parking to Baguio senior citizens was still being discussed in the city council, I had the honor to be part of their consultation. I was then the manager of the Maharlika Livelihood Complex. The plan was to give Baguio SCs three hours of free parking where the reckoning is by hourly basis.
My reaction then was one of gratefulness for such proposed ordinance as I am also a SC. I humbly proposed though that the free parking should be limited to only 2 hours justifying among others, that such will not discourage those business people to open parking spaces for profit.
There you are. One way to solve the parking problem is to encourage private business people to invest in multi-story parking in strategic places. They could be given some incentives like tax holiday or providing them with soft loans with very low interest. Maybe a Built-Operate-Lease-Transfer scheme could be considered.
In all likelihood, the parking area will be located some distance from the city center. A shuttle system should then be in place, courtesy again of private individuals. Tourists will have to leave their cars in the parking area.
Our national DOT is aiming to have at least 7.8M foreign tourists, more than the approximately 6.4M that visited the Philippines this year. Am sure that the city tourism office is well in the loop about this. Any plan of the city to further increase local tourist arrivals however will not be sensible if it will result to other problems in other aspects. It should tackle both the foreign and tourist arrivals at the same time, in a more holistic approach. Meaning, it will plan with other concern units or agencies.
By the way, Mayor Benjie Magalong was negotiating with the DA for the agency to allot a number of hectares to the city government from the Bureau of Animal Industry land to be developed into an integrated bus terminal. That could also include the needed parking area for visitors, if things will materialize accordingly. Being part then of a small group for continuing discussions relevant to the above, we believe that the law creating the lot specifically for animal breeding use only must be superseded by a new law that will allow the use of the land for other purposes. That should be done pronto. The concern about where to establish a parking area/station will then be eased.**
