One of the things that has recently gotten my wife’s attention is how Bacolod City has new street signs that have new names for the numbered streets that most Bacolodnons and even transferees (a demographic she officially belongs to) have gotten used to.
The streets that have been renamed, according to the fancy new street signs, are the no-nonsense ones named from 1st to 28th streets, which start from the Provincial Capitol area, or the kilometer zero of the city/province, and proceed perpendicularly along Lacson Street, which is the main thoroughfare, in a northward direction.
Following the numbered convention of naming streets, which is also how it is done in cities like New York, is easy because if one knows the address based on the numbered street, all one has to do is count. For Bacolodnons, that would mean counting upward if you are northbound, and counting backwards if heading in the opposite direction.
So, for example, your destination is at 17th Street and you are currently at 6th, you know that if you take Lacson Street, you are exactly 11 street corners away. For the locals, the next question that would commonly need to be addressed is if the destination is at the ‘bukid’ or ‘baybay’ side. That means that if along Lacson Street, the destination is either on its east side or where the mountains are, hence bukid; or the west side, which goes towards the sea, hence baybay.
So, if I am told to go to an address with 17th Street, baybay, I already have a general idea where that is. Even if I am new to Bacolod City, but know the street naming convention, it is still very easy to learn and figure out.
For drivers, navigators, and pathfinders, it makes sense, it’s easy, and for those 28 city blocks, you don’t really need Google Maps or Waze to figure it out.
However, it has been noticeable that the numbered streets have been given an alias, which is weird because giving logically numbered streets a second name that now have no rhyme or reason would just obviously result in confusion, yet despite all the problems they have to deal with, city officials still somehow found the time and effort to make it happen, along with the budget to make fancy new street signs just for their new street names.
Renaming streets is a common side quest for many legislators, who need to have filed ordinances in order to look busy or at least useful, just in case they need something to crow about when they run again. Most of us understand that and leave them to it, falling back to our old habits and the street names we grew up with, while they churn out ordinances that are of questionable value.
However, there should be some streets that should be granted immunity from renaming, and in the case of Bacolod, the simple, efficient, and elegantly numbered street names should be among those. They may not be named after heroes or historical figures, but they make sense and everyone already knows how they work. Let’s not make it more confusing just because someone wants to unlock an ordinance achievement, or order some new street signs, which nobody really needs anyway.
It may be a minor issue for some, but the practice of renaming streets and buildings, along with sidelining important historical events, is something that should be made more difficult for our public servants to do, if only to discourage them from doing it so often because it is so easy to do. Renaming a street that has held its name for decades shouldn’t be easily done. If they want to put somebody’s name on a street, however deserving, they should either wait for a new one to be built, or at least go through a thorough process to ensure that their ‘minor’ act can be truly justified.
My wife and I may sound like a couple of old geezers who are hanging on to the old ways too much, but the point is that our nation and communities have so much more problems and issues that must be addressed so our legislators should better things to do than just going about renaming streets, for kicks.
Every time we see streets being renamed, we should always start wondering what else could’ve been done with the time and effort that was spent to do something so inconsequential. Unless our societies are already perfect and everything that we need is already provided for, such a silly practice is something that decent and well-meaning public servants should strive to avoid.*
