One advantage the streets of most towns and cities in Negros Occidental is that they are wide enough to accommodate multiple modes of usage, instead of being the simple car-centric infrastructure that they are currently designed for, which if you come to think of it, is a philosophy that our city officials and urban planners will have to seriously consider if we want to build better societies where people, and not cars are the focus.
I wouldn’t bank on Bacolod City being able to make that pivot from being car-centric to people-centric, as it is already pretty big and busy, which is a curse for most “highly urbanized” cities in this country, but for other Negrense towns and cities, there is still a better chance that their streets can be transformed to become more people-friendly, if only the local officials and the private sector are willing to pay the price and live with the growing pains of any transformation that will take time to germinate, but has the potential to totally transform the way the next generation of residents can live their lives.
In cities like Barcelona, Spain, they have streets that are narrower than ours, but on their streets they make room for a proper bike lane, parking, and leave just one lane for cars. Aside from providing enough sidewalk space, they also line their roads and sidewalks with trees for shade. This encourages pedestrians and bicycles and at the same time discourages private cars. From what I’ve seen there, the bicycling population isn’t even that big, but the infrastructure is already there, ready to absorb the future demand while at the same time encouraging a transition to active mobility rather than car dependence.
On the other hand, there are cities like Hiroshima in Japan, where there aren’t even proper bike lanes, but the bicycling population is already quite large. At first blush and based on infrastructure alone, it looks like it would be scarier to bike around there than in Barcelona, but based on the number of regular folk actually riding bikes, it looks like that because of the government or the culture of the people there, active mobility has already become a viable form of transportation, enough to make car ownership unnecessary, or at the least, secondary.
On the extreme end would be Paris, France, where its Mayor, Anne Hidalgo is aggressively pushing to make one of the world’s biggest megacities “100% cyclable” and has transformed the transportation landscape, proving that with political will, anything is possible. What Hidalgo has done and continues to do actually shows our public officials how they can change the course of their cities, and the combination of infrastructure and the active encouragement of the local government has made the Paris transportation system more biased towards people rather than cars.
Imagine if the cities north and south of Bacolod decided to give the transformation that Paris attempted a go, and built or repurposed the necessary infrastructure that would encourage biking, walking, and public transportation, rather than private car ownership. They can start with wider and obstruction-free sidewalks that are actually walkable and PWD friendly, put planters in between where trees that can provide shade can be planted, add protected bike lanes, assign parking, and leave a lane for cars and public transportation.
Such a setup would leave just one lane for 4-wheeled vehicles, but allot more space for pedestrians, cyclists to use the streets safely. Greenery would provide shade and some protection from rain, along with lowering temperatures by minimizing the heat island effect that comes from the purely concrete jungles that we end up building when government contractors thoughtlessly pour concrete to build roads meant to move cars and not people. But if that happens, our towns and cities would be more liveable and accessible for those who don’t have to be dependent on cars and parking spaces, and at the same time promote more healthy lifestyles for a population that learns to walk and bike to get around, rather than have to ride cars or hail tricycles.
I can imagine boomers chafing at the thought of being forced to use their legs more to get around their community where cars are discouraged by a government that gives those machines less room on the roads and less parking spaces, because of a shift in paradigms where pedestrians, cyclists, scooters, and other personal mobility means of transportation are encouraged. This resistance would most likely be the reason why many public officials are hesitant or won’t even consider trying to force such drastic changes on their communities that might not like the idea anyway.
However, those of us who have seen how life can be like in communities that prioritize people over cars, and are willing to walk or bike more, rather than need a car to be able to perform the smallest of errands, the wait for the public officials who are willing to change the way things are and the way things work in our communities feels like it is still going to be a long one, especially given the priorities of the people in charge.*
