Mayor Evelio Leonardia said the newly replaced and widened Magsungay bridge that was inaugurated Tuesday, December 8, will help ease traffic along Lacson Street in Bacolod City.
“It will change the complexion of traffic in the city”, Leonardia said in a press release from the Bacolod Information Office.
The bridge spans the Magsungay river along Lacson Extension leading to the Murcia-Alijis road and its original two lanes were expanded into four lanes.
The new four-lane bridge is strategically located, so it will easily connect downtown Bacolod to Alijis, Tangub, Pahanocoy, Cabug, Sum-ag, Mansilingan, and Handumanan, Leonardia said.
“Given the volume of cars using this road, this will surely improve traffic flow as not only that the bridge is now 4 lanes but even the road leading from it up to Magsaysay Avenue was also widened into 4 lanes,” the mayor added.
“And as this connects to the other newly widened bridge crossing the Lupit river near the San Antonio Abad Parish Church, its traffic impact in this extremely busy road network is going to be very significant,” he added.
“This bridge will be put to real good use,” he added.
The replaced and widened bridge is now open for public use.
Meanwhile, the original steel bridge that was dismantled will be reconstructed over a river at Barangay Vista Alegre to connect it with Barangay Granada and also serve the relocation sites there, the press release said.
Leonardia said the bridge project was one of the major infrastructure projects funded by the loan of the city government with the Development Bank of the Philippines.
“With the DBP loan, we will have more projects. And more projects mean more jobs, and more economic stimulation. It will be one of the factors to revive the local economy,” he said.
“For me, COVID is just a temporary stop for sure. As soon as the COVID crisis is over, we will go back to business and we will be back on track, and this project is part of that recovery program,” he said.
Vice Mayor El Cid Familiaran said many projects, both private and public funded, temporarily stopped because of COVID. “If only COVID did not happen, we can only imagine how fast our development would be as a city,” he added.
The vice mayor added that the mayor is giving top priority to the public health safety of Bacolodnos. One of this is to prioritize the procurement of vaccines once available, so people can go back to their normal lives, he said.
Rep. Greg Gasataya, who was represented by congressional consultant Mark Steven Mayo, said, “We believe this project is a clear manifestation that we have leaders who never give up no matter how tough the situation is. Mayor Bing is the man who gets the job done.”
Jerry Sy, president of Silver Dragon Construction, the private contractor that won the public bidding for the project, thanked the city government for the opportunity to serve Bacolod through this infrastructure.*