Urban planners and architects like Jun Palafox have long lamented the fact that the needs of pedestrians are often sidelined or ignored when it comes to designing buildings, roads and other infrastructures.
One need not look far into this blatant (I’d almost say deliberate) oversight of pedestrians. Here in San Pedro City, for instance, I’d noticed so many damn examples of how our pedestrians almost had to play patintero with death due to the lack of (or poor quality of) infrastructure meant to protect them.
In our subdivision in Barangay San Antonio, for instance, sidewalks are NOT a part of the original plans for the development of our blocks. In fact, the only time we even had walkways in our street was sometime in 2018 when our drainage system was overhauled, and that didn’t really solve the problem of flooding in our street. But that’s another story.
I tend to believe the architects and planners for our subdivision really didn’t anticipate that many of our streets – and our main road, for one – would become clogged with cars. But today, some 35 years after our family moved in, our main road has become THE main thoroughfare for all sorts of vehicles going to the “upper” portion of Barangay San Antonio. I mean all sorts of vehicles – from bicycles and small electric vehicles to buses and even 18-wheeler trucks!
Add to this the fact that that main road has become a commercial hub, with all sorts of establishments sprouting up in the past few days. The result: not only there were traffic jams now at our main road during rush hour, but pedestrians, particularly students on their way home from schools nearby, had to risk their lives walking at the curbside. Kung walang side street na pwede silang malakaran, baka mas naging mapanganib pa ang main road na iyon para sa kanila.
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And when we do have sidewalks for pedestrians, such as along the National Highway and other main roads, hindi rin masasabi na ligtas daanan ang mga ito para sa pedestrians.
And I’m not just talking about the cracked and caved pavement near the San Pedro Bridge that I raised in this column space a few weeks ago.
Kung hindi man ginagawang parking ng mga sasakyan o tambayan ng mga vendor ang ating mga bangketa, may mga pagkakataon na iniiwan pang bukas ang mga manhole nang wala man lamang warning signs o kahit pangharang man lang.
There was, for instance, in Barangay Pacita, one manhole near our workplace that was left open for days on end without so much as a warning sign. Kung hindi ka sanay sa lugar, o nakatitig ka lagi sa smartphone mo, malaki ang tsansa mong lumusot ka papunta sa malaking kanal sa ilalim ng bangketa.
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The Filipinos’ adoption of the Western (or, specifically, American) “car-centered” culture has meant that we now think of our bangketas or even open spaces as something that should accommodate not people but cars.
This, unfortunately, had meant that our streets had become dangerous zones for those who, I believed, we should be prioritizing in our city planning: the pedestrians who had to share our roads in our everyday lives.
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