Unapologetic

published 27 Oct 2007

It was drizzling last Thursday morning. I stepped out of the house at 7 a.m. for an early meeting. I had to commute. Along McArthur Highway, just at the boundary between Valenzuela and Malabon, was a stretch of mud pools—big, small, deep, shallow. My first thought: “My shoes!”

This was the (re-) construction site for the now-notorious Tullahan Bridge. For the last seven months, commuters from my part of town have adopted to the major hassle of alighting just before the bridge, walking across a makeshift footbridge, and going on board yet another vehicle on the other side. Typically Filipino, we just made do with what was there, refusing to let it dampen our spirits.

Fortunately, Thursday was a good and productive day. I promptly forgot about the earlier hassle. Friday, however, I was headed to the office, eager to flesh out a column that had been brewing in my head for quite some time. Lo and behold, I had to step on the hardened mud. The cementing and flattening of the ramps leading to the bridge have not yet been completed.

I decided then that I should write about this now for this may be the last opportunity I get before the bridge is opened for real and the issue conveniently forgotten.

This bridge was closed on March 16. Nobody objected to the rehabilitation as it was seen as an absolute necessity. Then, summer was only beginning. It was chaos, of course, but as in anything gotten used to over time, new systems emerged. Work progressed, motorists detoured and pedestrians used footbridges to transport them from one end to the other.

And then came the rainy season. Residents remained clueless as to the progress of the work—the entire area was covered all the time. The footbridges were reported to be structurally unsound. They weren’t even well-lit. They sure looked scary, especially during a downpour and the river below you looked menacingly closer. Meanwhile, the monstrous traffic in the alternate route added at least an hour to motorists’ driving time.

I wrote about this in August (“Water under this troubled bridge”, Aug. 24) but I focused on how residents were able to turn the situation around into a moral exercise for patience and resilience as well as into numerous commercial opportunities.

Indeed, there were all sorts of wares peddled along the path of pedestrians. There were clothes, food and accessories. There was even a snake show where the snake was supposed to sway to the tune of popular songs (people threw money into a can). A new FX terminal was opened.

Through all this, people awaited the much-touted opening slated for Oct. 15. In fact there was even a giant poster that showed a countdown. Thirty days became 15 days became three days became one day.

On Oct. 14, the Department of Public Works and Highways came out with a statement that the opening of the bridge to motorists was pushing through. People in the newsroom asked me, who would have first-hand knowledge: Was this true?

I said I doubted it because on that day, while the bridge itself had been completed and had been in fact opened to pedestrians a week earlier, both its ends were still miserably unattended, mounds of earth lining the area where people could actually walk.

I looked forward to seeing what sort of magic the public works department could cook up overnight. On the 15th, the supposed opening was front-page news. And there were vans of equipment of major television stations. On tv, the project engineer was interviewed, and he declared proudly that at 10 a.m. that day, motorists could pass the bridge.

That evening, I tried it myself. It was a rough road ride. Bear in mind that I was not on board an SUV but a humble jeepney. There was only one lane open for either direction, and the piles of bare earth along the road stalled traffic big time.

At least, DPWH could say the bridge was indeed opened on the day it said it would.

Never mind that on the following day, it had to be closed again. Today, seven months and 11 days from the day the bridge was closed to traffic, it still is inutile.

The public works department can come up with all sorts of excuses for not being able to finish the bridge on time. Nobody is surprised anymore. What was more appalling was the attempt to humor the people by opening the bridge on the promised date, ready or not, and closing it again without so much of an apology or an admission of negligence or inefficiency.

The tragedy is that once the bridge opens, finally, people will be just too grateful and relieved they will more likely tend to dismiss the matter. Heck, they will forgive the way this project team of the DPWH insulted their common sense.

As the merry way is in this country, this offense will just be conveniently swept under the rug.

In the meantime, nothing is corrected. Nobody responsible for this boo-boo gets reprimanded. And people are forced, as they always have been, to make nothing much out of it.

***

Allow me to correct a mistake I made in last week’s column, “Banking is a public trust”. Somewhere towards the middle of the article, I made reference to “the late matriarch.” It should have read “the retired matriarch.”