Baguio employs more traffic experiments

Slow crawl Baguio City has been experiencing worsening traffic with the influx of tourists this holiday season. Aldwin Quitasol

BAGUIO CITY — The City Government is eyeing to implement more traffic experiments along its different roads in the aim to ease the worsening gridlock that has been inconveniencing the public especially during the holidays and tourist peak seasons.

Mayor Benjamin Magalong said that they have already started implementing some of these traffic experiments in major roads in the city as short-term solutions while more traffic experiments are yet to be explored.

He also said that these are stop-gap measures while the city is awaiting the outcome of the comprehensive traffic study done by traffic experts from the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA).

The MMDA is conducting a traffic study costing around P1.5 million as a donation to Baguio City under its corporate social responsibility projects, in which it will submit its comprehensive report by early next year with recommendations on how to manage the growing traffic problem.

Data from the Traffic Management Division under the City Engineering Office showed that various roads in the city have a capacity to accommodate only around 18,000 vehicles. However, the number of registered vehicles in the Land Transportation Office already reached more than 64,000 and is still increasing, aside from the volume of vehicles by tourists going to Baguio.

One of the proposed solutions by the City Government is the construction of multi-level parking structures in strategic areas to accommodate the huge volume of vehicles that flock to the city during weekends and peak tourism months.

Also part of the ongoing activities by the City Government is the redesigning of pedestrian lanes and intersections of the different roads.