STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS - Bacolod City

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collections from this activity and for other services of a record P6 million. This is
a 15% improvement over the previous period’s total collections of P5.2 million.
The TMU/BTAO Offices also maintained open communication lines with
officials of transport groups so that their problems can be attended to more
quickly and feedback from them can be more readily accessed on anything
concerning traffic and enforcement of traffic rules.
For smoother flow of traffic, we also installed 2 traffic lights at the
intersections of La Salle-BS Aquino Drive and Burgos-Hilado Sts. during this
report period. This brings to 12 the total number of traffic lights in the city, 6 or
50% of which were installed only within the last 3 years. The traffic lights at the
Lopue’s East intersection will rise soon once the road widening at the corners of
that intersection will be finished.
One major achievement during the period is the passage of an ordinance
for the establishment of a northbound terminal along the highway in Banago
fronting Pepsi-Cola. Once operational, this will greatly reduce the number of
public vehicles entering the city from the north. Even Ceres Liner has agreed to
transfer its northbound terminal to that area in a show of cooperation with the city
to improve our over-all traffic situation.
To make more areas in the city accessible, we have also undertaken to
build more link roads. The one which connected Las Palmas to the
Circumferential Road as mentioned earlier has already been completed. The
others in the pipeline are:
- the link road from Barangay Taculing to Barangay Alijis National
Highway Bridge
- the continuation of the Gatuslao St. Extension thru the back of
Robinson’s Place with a bridge
- the link road from Eroreco Subdivision to the Circumferential Road
- the widening of Burgos St. from San Juan to the bridge at Barangay
10, and
- arterial roads from Barangay Vista Alegre to Burgos-Granada Road.
Once completed, these link roads will make more areas easily reachable
and provide alternate routes to help decongest traffic on over-used roads.
We have been blessed with the help of private groups like Bantay Banwa,
Bantay Bayan and various motorcycle clubs which volunteer to do traffic watch
and even assist during traffic accidents, motorcades and special events like the
MassKara Festival and All Souls’ Day. Bantay Banwa, in particular, donated
more than 100 vertical street signages worth almost half a million pesos