One-Hectare Underground Parking in Dumaguete City

I honestly can not see the point in it?

Back in my City in Oz Private companies build Parking complexes as well as Toll Motorways etc and many times they have gone broke when people either park elsewhere or drive around the tolls like I do/did. I REFUSED to travel on a roadway where taxes raised from gasoline are supposed to go towards the building/upkeep of road ways. Sorry but an extra 5 minutes driving will not kill me! (Same goes for parking)

Unless there is a Super Mall built on top of this underground Car Park to attract the people enmasse, I cannot see how/why it will attract 1000 cars a day to pay to park there, meaning 1000 people a day will need to catch a Tricycle/Jeepney to their final destination, adding to an already overcrowded traffic problem, let alone the company building it recovering their outlay in a timely fashion.

Also in my city back in Oz, it use to have two-way streets leading in and out of the city, but the council there eventually changed the two way to one way which helped a LOT by running all traffic coming into the city via one two-lane road, to the top of the city where it looped back to another two lane road leading back out of the city with one way and two way streets leading into and out of each side of the city. They also installed MORE traffic lights which were timed to change so that the traffic flowed effectively, often you could time it so you could drive through the city without having to stop at any intersection, many intersections also had sensor pads under the road so when little to no traffic was flowing along a major road, when a vehicle came in from a side road, it sensed the vehicle and quickly changed the lights so that the vehicle can go on its way without waiting very long for the lights to change. The Highway By-pass was the BEST thing they ever did to get the Trucks OUT OF THE CITY!

The technology is there, I just wonder why it is not being utilised to make the traffic congestion inside Dumaguete more bearable...

As Dr. Shiva stated; Park and Ride system.
We have 'Park & Ride' areas in Oz where they are mostly located BESIDE a Train Station or somewhere where there is reliable Bus transport that can safely and comfortably transport the people who use these places to their desired destinations. Ipswich City uses smaller Buses that are brightly coloured and Air-conditioned and run at regular intervals covering a vast area to make them appealing to users. They also run on LPG which does not pollute like Gasoline and Diesel! This system could greatly reduce the traffic congestion, noise and pollution that Dumaguete is well known for, making it a by far more appealing City for Tourists to visit, not to mention the health benefits it would create where people (mainly the locals who work in the city every day) would no longer need to walk around wearing annoying uncomfortable face masks to try and minimise the health risks involved whilst making a living.

Many originally criticised Ipswich when they stepped into the new millennium by introducing clean Buses, rolling out fiber-optic internet, fitting CCTV Cameras to almost all of their inner city streets before expanding to the outer suburbs, installing more traffic lights etc but over time MANY other cities began to adopt the same strategies, because in time it all proved to be VERY EFFECTIVE and thankfully the forward vision proved to be the right thing to do. It ended up creating a very effective and safer city in the long term, something Dumaguete could easily do by setting examples to the rest of the country...

Just my opinion...

 

Lets not even address the issue of airport landing safety! If the city cant even get one landowner to "top" his trees for the safety of the airline passengers that fuel the tourist industry, I seriously doubt that any significant progress can be made on a project as complex and expensive as a hectare sized underground parking. Why not start with something as simple as re-routing heavy vehicular traffic around town and off Rizal Blvd?

 

There are cities in Philippines which have better traffic planning. You can check this with Google maps and street view. Only bottlenecks as an example for Davao are the bridges. In Dumaguete it is the downtown area with too many tricycles. In Tanjay is only the national highway somewhat congested. Other parallel running streets are nearly empty.

 

I don't think the Dumaguete city LGU has jurisdiction on the said land owner since the location is Sibulan and second, the airport is under national agency CAAP. And YES they lack the will in creating an effective solution for it. Really hoping for a better coordination between agencies to quickly resolve issues

 

Hmmmmmmmmm Do you have enough years left to realize this Hope?

 

Getting the delivery trucks off the street in daylight hours would go a long way to opening up traffic flow.....Surely there is a way for them to deliver at night, maybe between 8pm and 6am...Could even add some employment to the city...

 

Good point... I think the underground parking development is just part of the mayor's master plan for Dumaguete.

A master plan for Dumaguete

 

Comparing Dumaguete with Ormoc, which have a comparable downtown area does Ormoc handle the traffic problem much better. First the main routes in the city, in the urban, in the suburban and in the wider area are connected with jeepney and bus routes. Second all routes start at the bus and jeepney terminal at the port. Third many shopping possibilities are quite near of each other. Thanks for these points much less tricycles are needed in the city. For Dumaguete it would be helpful to extend the jeepney routes, which are ending at the outskirts of the downtown area into the downtown. At the main streets outside of the downtown there should be build some parking lots to build a park and ride system where the jeepney routes are passing by.