connection, connection, connection
This was my reply to Carlos Celdran's latest post about Manila reopening restaurants in Intramuros as a trade-off to closing down the establishments on the Baywalk:
I'd welcome the re-establishment of restaurants in Intramuros with, as you say, clear building guidelines and oversight.
What is clearly missing though is a convenient physical link between Intramuros and the rest of the city.
Was it Alcazaren or Villalon that proposed a tram line between the bay and the walled city?
The baywalk (and a redeveloped CCP complex) could work well with Intramuros if there was either a BRT stretching from the airport to intramuros, or a slow surface tram between the CCP and the old city.
It would solve your parking problem -people could park somewhere along the route and catch the tram in either direction.
They could watch an event in the CCP or Folk Arts or PICC, catch the tram to intramuros for dinner, then catch it back to bay walk for a promemade.
If there's a strong pedestrian connection between the baywalk, ccp and malate -they could also walk to the bars for after dinner drinks.
There is, though, one thing about the baywalk that new restaurants in intramuros won't replace: democratic access.
UDC
This is, of course, one of my repeating themes.
Image credit: The Strasbourg Tram from Wikimedia Commons
photo by by C. Horwitz, 2004
photo by by C. Horwitz, 2004
6 comments:
I agree with your suggestion. I think we should put more trams in the tourist belt area. I've been doing my graduate studies here in Melbourne, Australia and I've observed how a good public transport system has encouraged tourism by making the city easy to navigate. Melbourne may not have Sydney's natural beauty (i.e., harbor views) but it's got a charming urban fabric made navigable by an extensive public transport system.
anonymous,
I agree. melbourne's put in a lot of great measures to make the city not only navigable, but very livable. Jan Gehl, includes Melbourne in hie "liberated cities" list. He recenlty completed a long study of urban public spaces in the city.
I would be great for some of our smaller cities (maybe Davao or Iloilo or Bacolod) to emulate Melbourne.
A truly wonderful idea, UDC!
I, for one, would love to see its actual development and manifestation.
Well looks like your wishes have been heard, DOTC is undertaking a study with UP and some foreign funding agency for the feasibility of BRT's. I would think that some routes make sense very quickly (shall I actually say it... well yes, MRT7). Anyway I'm not sure where else they will look but this is a welcome development in lieu of the expensive and slow addition of rail based mass transit routes. For smaller cities they should look at this very quickly as well while road development is still early enough to accomodate additional lanes exclusive to buses.
peter,
that's good news. I hope they get through the study quickly enough. I'd be happy if they tapped the expertise and (possibly free) assistance of EMBARQ of the World Resources Institute.
Or the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.
Ditto on the smaller cities - particularly Cebu who is currently being tempted by a P46Billion light rail system.
You may want to suggest this to the UP Transportation Center. I think they're one of the parties to the study.
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