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  1. Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Posts
    25,038
    #1
    Lame...lame reasons. Heritage my A**.



    Lacson-España flyover takes off despite protests
    By: Augusto Villalon
    Philippine Daily Inquirer 2:20 am | Monday, August 6th, 2012

    THE DEPARTMENT of Environment and Natural Resources has given the permit to topple down these trees on Lacson Avenue, Sampaloc. The sidewalk beside the University of Santo Tomas will be narrowed for road expansion to pave way for a multimillion flyover.

    Another flyover is preparing to soar in one of Manila’s most populous districts.

    The district is Sampaloc, whose already dense population is aggravated by the daily influx of thousands of students who attend the University of Santo Tomas (UST), Far Eastern University, National University, University of the East and other vast campuses in the University Belt.

    The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) announced plans to construct the flyover on Lacson Avenue, eventually to be followed by a Metro Rail Transit (MRT) line on España Boulevard.

    The Varsitarian, official student paper of UST, quotes government officials in a report as justifying the project to “alleviate traffic congestion at this major intersection.”

    To alleviate traffic, whether vehicular or human, is an absolute necessity in Sampaloc and in the rest of the city as well. But is a flyover the answer?

    A flyover is the easiest answer, a stock solution to traffic management that favors the movement of vehicles over the movement of people.

    The Varsitarian says, the DPWH has argued that, from “studies we made, we found out that the level of service has already plunged to the F level,” referring to the worst condition for traffic.

    The flyover construction has been preceded by a road-widening project that will eat into Lacson’s sidewalks, displace pedestrians many of whom are students, and cut down trees.

    The Varsitarian says the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has allowed “trees which have a measurement of 30 cm or more to be cut down” for the road widening and the flyover construction.

    A traffic-impact assessment is being prepared to justify the flyover project.

    Traffic management

    There are many ways to reduce traffic. An integrated master plan that looks at design technology together with transit development is normally done for an overview on solving traffic problems.

    Other methods include coordinated traffic lights to allow smooth flow, and—this is a more far-fetched but overdue solution—the reeducation of Filipino drivers.

    Even simply controlling the crush of jeepneys at loading points (jeepneys have made the corner of Lacson and España their terminal, apparently with the blessing of City Hall or the MMDA); strictly controlling parking and imposing the provision of off-street parking facilities by all new constructions; clearing sidewalks from obstructions and illegal hawkers; and other relatively simple “housekeeping” measures will alleviate traffic.

    These methods are hardly carried out on Lacson-España and elsewhere. When the traffic mess piles up, the DPWH and MMDA and the rest of government get an excuse to construct multimillion flyovers. (The Sampaloc flyover is estimated to cost over P900 million.)

    Lack of impact studies

    However, none of the studies by the DPWH takes into account the software aspect. Has the impact of this project with respect to zoning laws and to visual congestion of the area been studied?

    Have community-impact and cultural heritage-impact assessments been done?

    Despite being a highway project, it’s not just a road job. It has strong social implications that maybe the road people don’t see.

    The proposed flyover impacts on the local community which has to live with the wages of flyover long after DPWH completes its construction. It will, actually, change people’s lives. It may have the same impact as the LRT on Rizal Avenue, which has caused the death of business and street life.

    “So many flyovers detach, distort and scar the city,” professor Rizalito Mendoza of the UST College of Architecture is quoted by the Varsitarian as saying. “The flyover’s autocentric design dehumanizes the city, separating the people because of its focus on vehicular rather than pedestrian mobility.”

    (The Varsitarian, in its July 7 editorial, “Down with the Lacson Flyover,” has protested the constructions. Visit The Varsitarian | The Official Student Publication of the University of Santo Tomas.)

    Urban neighborhoods have been sliced in two by flyovers, dividing what once was a homogenous population and cutting off contact, which abets urban decay and blight.

    Is flyover “progress”? Are we looking at outdated development models? The Los Angeles model, vehicle-friendly but people-unfriendly, divides neighborhoods, isolates sections of the city from each other, destroys the human activity of simply walking, has been proven to be harmful to community life.

    To restore community life, some American cities have gone to the extreme. Flyovers and elevated highways are being taken down at great cost and replaced with open green areas.

    Urban quality of life is what cities are recapturing. We want to live in comfortable cities that we can be proud of.

    Assault on heritage

    Heritage is, of course, an important part of the urban quality of life and forms the identity of a city.

    UST is the oldest university in Asia and a national heritage site: Four of its campus landmarks were declared National Cultural Treasures by the National Museum in 2010. Last January, when UST turned 401 years old, the National Historical Institute declared UST a National Historical Landmark.

    With a national-heritage declaration come sanctions to development taking place around the heritage site.

    A flyover trivializes the historic and cultural significance of the UST campus. Sight lines to the heritage site must be maintained. UST must not go the way of the campus of De La Salle University on Taft Avenue that was forever ruined by the elevated tracks that run across its entire length.

    Progress? At what cost? It is time to rethink our image of progress.

    The pressures on the fragile quality of Manila life are increasing at an alarming rate. Alarms should ring loud before another flyover accelerates the city’s degradation rate

  2. Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Posts
    22,705
    #2
    Actually... the one thing that would worry me is that they're narrowing the sidewalks.

    It's already very difficult to go through most of the Metro as a pedestrian. Places where the sidewalks are so narrow that you have to walk in the road. Lacson north of Espana was not one of these places. And this is important for the thousands of students who commute there every day.

    Has anyone here ever tried to walk the length of EDSA? It's near-impossible. There are no sidewalks in many places. Yet if you're commuting, it's almost necessary. A good sidewalk system would make it easier to limit buses... allow us to force them to stop only at certain points.

    Heritage is a weak call... because the frontage of UST is on Espana, and the flyover won't cover that. When you're on Forbes, you can't even SEE UST... it's stuck behind a tall wall.

    But road-widening won't help here... the volume will just expand to fill the road. The problem is the horrendous choke points north of Espana which cause traffic to back up all the way to the intersection.... especially that messy five-way intersection at Laon-Laan and the tight one at Dapitan.

    Ang pagbalik ng comeback...

  3. Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Posts
    1,510
    #3
    I am also unsure if a flyover is a good idea. There are just too many traffic lights and intersections to and from the proposed flyover. I actually believe that prohibitong parking and structures on sidewalks on identified sidestreets would provide more gains.

  4. Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Posts
    40,038
    #4
    I think narrowing the sidewalk is ok in this area alam ko maluwag yun sidewalk diyan


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  5. Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Posts
    17,340
    #5
    It won't affect any of the NLEX - SLEX elevated road plans naman?

  6. Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Posts
    22,705
    #6
    It doesn't cross the rails, so it shouldn't affect the MMDA proposal.

UST Complain Against Proposed Espana-Lacson Flyover.