The road from Silay City proper to the “new” airport is already being broken up so it can be “repaired.”
This is interesting to see because the airport is still being referred to as “new” and yet our government has already deemed the concrete road as needing to be replaced.
However, if you come to think of it, the road and the airport are almost 15-years-old, so maybe it is time for our government whose specialty is pouring concrete to hand out a few more lucrative contracts to pour even more concrete.
I personally know this road quite well because I use it to go home almost every weekday, and if you ask me, I’m honestly bewildered why major repairs were found to be necessary. As far as I remember, it wasn’t full of cracks and potholes yet. If there were any, I don’t think it was so bad that a generous layer of the usual asphalt couldn’t smoothen out whatever flaws that turned up.
Anyway, it seems like they’re going to do the entire 5-kilometer stretch of the older inner lane all over again, so the best we can hope for at this point is they do a better job this time and whatever they build lasts longer.
I’m not a civil engineer, so I’m in no position to make judgements on the service life of a concrete road. But if you look at our government has been doing to our roads, one has to take note of all the unnecessary taxpayer-funded spending we pour on our country’s roads.
Even if we assume that the highly lucrative build-break-repair cycle is a reasonable one, it is quite unbelievable how rich our country is when it comes to our roads.
Take for example those solar-powered cat’s eyes that light up at night which they’ve been putting as additional lane dividers. Most of the currently being repaired road to the airport I am referring to just had those things installed a couple of years ago and now, they’re being dug up and thrown away because of the major road repair activity. I don’t know how much the taxpayer paid for those road safety devices, but it must’ve been a significant amount. And now, those light-up devices are being torn up and destroyed by the contractor that’s repairing the road.
Maybe after a couple of months after the repair is completed, another contractor will come in to lay a new set of those discarded solar cat’s eyes that we paid for with our income tax and VAT.
After that set is drilled in, it won’t be surprising to see an asphalting crew come in to add a layer of asphalt over the road, the painted lane markings, and the replacement cat’s eyes. When that is done, someone will come in with a new set of those accessories and features, spending our taxes over and over again on that same piece of road and all its necessary abubots.
And then, just when you think they’re finally done, they will start breaking it up again in order to work on the drainage under the road. It’s like they have no regard for the funds being wasted on these highly lucrative building and repair activities. Maybe they think they are playing the game SimCity using the powerful cheat code “taxpayersbahala”.
We don’t know if that relatively new airport road and its solar-powered cat’s eyes have already surpassed their economic life and that is why it is already being broken down, dug up and repaired. If that is actually the case, I’d love it if someone with the knowledge would take the time to give an explanation so we can all understand better and stop complaining that our taxes are just being spent on the endlessly lucrative cycle of road building and repairing.
But if you ask me, the 15-year service life for a concrete road and less than 5-year service life of those solar-powered cat’s eyes that were installed on that road doesn’t sound very economically smart and as taxpayers, it definitely feels like we are being shortchanged when I see such repair work being done on a road I’d still consider as “new”.
If the government has run out of new roads to build or widen, then it should already stop pouring more concrete and divert that money on programs and initiatives that could make our world a better place. Maybe we can green our country, put up better social safety nets or maybe even change the design of our towns and cities to be more human-friendly and less car-centric.
But why do I get this nagging feeling that pouring concrete is the only core competency of our government when it comes to spending our nation’s precious funds?*
