Urban Problem #2: Tangled

If you find utility posts with their wires tangled like ponytails branching everywhere like vines cute, then I think you need a check in the mental hospital right now.

Tangled utility posts, either for telecommunications or for electricity, are tangled like this. Not only an eyesore, but also a hazard to the life and limb of anyone who is near this. I should take note of the live wire that snapped near Plaza San Lorenzo Ruiz after the rain yesterday in Binondo Church in Manila, it burned a pedicab and left the northbound part of the road in a huge traffic jam.

Our dear Meralco and other Telecom companies charge us huge but we get a slow service when a post collapses or a transformer problems or even wire theft.

I’ll give you an example, the electric wires around the famed Academic Oval in UP Diliman is underground. The Academic Oval is where the 6 famed buildings are located and an effort to keep it as stately and monumental was implemented. Not having electricity wires blocking the views of the building give everyone who walk and jog through the Oval the sights of the University’s monumental buildings and the green environment of the forested middle and the tree lined streets. No eyesores, just plain good campus experience, its also a factor why Diliman is so conducive to learning.

There has been proposals and tantrums from past presidents to finally have our electric grid buried underground. Of course the prevailing cost and the Right of Way is the first counter-proposal given by our Utility Companies, of course, molding a concrete post is cheaper than excavating, but in the long term everybody benefits from this since there will be lesser chances of electricity loss due to temperature changes and pilferage since there will be lesser human contact if wires are buried underground.

This is the chance we have, since virtually Manny Pangilinan now holds all of these utility companies under his hand (Meralco, PDLT - Digitel), we can as well now request the total redesign of our grids into the underground system.

If this is not an issue, try photographing something in Manila without those damn cables in the photograph. You’ll get irritated by the fact that this is a big eyesore to your subjects.

Urban Problem #1 Pedestrian Friendly Roads

@6 months ago with 787 notes
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#urbaneyesores