Roughly a decade ago, I wrote a column in reaction to a letter I received from Mr. Edward Flores of Belisario Heights in Bajada. Although I had never met Edward, I considered him a friend; he had written RICOCHET some five letters through the years.(I hope you are still around and going strong, my friend; I hope, too, you could share some of your strong thoughts once more with the readers.)

The tone of his letter then was attuned to the hope in the heart of many of us Dabawenyos – the hope for an immediate future bustling with economic activity and humming with growth under an atmosphere of dependable and solid peace.

The letter conjured a dream of garden-green growth, and growth for the City we call home never dies. It never should.

Dear Mr. Bartolo: It’s glad news  that Mayor Rogelio Antalan of Samal City is in favor of the proposal to link the “Garden City” to Davao City via a long-span suspension bridge. If realized, this bridge will speed up the economic development of Samal City and nearby areas in the same way that the Mactan Bridge in Cebu contributed to the economic boom that is now sweeping the island and its capital, Lapu-lapu City.

Since the proposed Samal Bridge will cost a billion pesos or more to construct, the best option for the co-owners (Samal and Davao cities) is to adopt the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) scheme so that both cities will not have to spend a lot of money for the project, but will only provide the site where the bridge will be located, and the laborers who will help in the construction of the bridge. On the other hand, a consortium of financiers and bridge designers (local or foreign, or a mix of both) will provide the money and the machines for this project.

As of now, without this bridge, Samal Island is “partially isolated” from Davao City as only a limited number of small ferry boats and pumpboats are the only means of transport for people and cargoes bound for Samal or Davao City, and this mode of transport is also time-consuming. But if a bridge is put up to link the two cities, more people and goods can be transported to Samal or Davao City via public or privately-owned vehicles which can cross the bridge any time of the day or night, and cut down travel time in just approximately two or three minutes, or even less.

So let us hope that the proposed bridge will become a reality in the near future… and once completed, the “Golden Gate” of Southern Mindanao will be a tourist attraction by itself and will bring more tourists and investors to the “Garden City” of Samal. (Signed) Mr. Edward C. Flores.

It has been almost a decade since the letter was written and the dream sown, but for so many years the dream has lain barren. It has not germinated at all.

I saw the letter as I was going over my files, cleaning up the orderly mess that a writer’s notes always get to be – a mess that one does not want one’s wife to mess around with.

Following was RICOCHET’s response:

There is nothing more inspiring and heart-warming for those who run a city than the thoughts of growth from the citizenry. I am sure that the officialdom of Samal will feel good upon reading the letter; in fact, to say that the mayor is “in favor” of the proposal may be an understatement.

More than Mayor Sara Duterte of Davao City, or Mayor Rody before her, the mayor of the “Garden City” should push for the idea of linking up with Davao through a bridge. The physical fact is that Samal is not only “partially” but “virtually” isolated from the Davao mainland – city and adjoining provinces – from the perspective of economic activity.

There is one thing about building a bridge, though. A bridge, built for the purpose of decongesting traffic, may link two banks of a river or two shores; but unless provisions are made to widen both approaches, the bridge itself may be the traffic bottleneck.

I want to be direct and frank, here. Will building a bridge to connect Davao to Samal ensure the “Garden City’s” growth? What purpose will the bridge serve if the existing artery of roads in Samal will, in fact, be the bottleneck of its own economic growth? Should the thrust not be for the Mayor of Samal to build first his infrastructure network within his city – as some sort of  “approach” to the bridge that will be built?

The success story of Mactan Island has been both an inspiration and a disappointment to many. Take, for example, the case of Iloilo City and Guimaras Island. Local leaders of Panay have used, on and off and especially during the election season, the concept of a bridge linking Iloilo City to Guimaras. But Guimaras has no network of passable roads. What will a bridge do except congest and crowd the little town of Jordan in Guimaras with people and goods?

For a time, there was talk of transferring the international airport of Iloilo from the town of Mandurriao in Iloilo province to the island of Guimaras. That move would hasten the growth of the island but, of course, the Iloilo politicians would have nothing of the idea.

Take the case of Mactan. The Mactan International Airport antedated the Mactan Bridge. I remember traveling to Cebu from Davao in the late 60s right after the Cebu airport was transferred from Lahug to Mactan Island. To go to the city, one had to take the ferry boat from the ramshackle Mactan wharf to Cebu.

The point is: the Mactan Bridge was built because the airport was in the island of Mactan; not the other way around. Now, take the case of Davao and Samal. Would the officialdom allow the transfer of the airport from Davao to Samal?

Another thing that had Lapulapu City and the whole island booming was the Mactan Export Processing Zone (MEPZ). Through aggressive and something domineering marketing strategy, with cheap real property rentals and a five-year tax holiday, Lapulapu City’s Mayor Weigel filled his city and the island with foreign investors.

(For comments and reactions, e-mail: renebartolo.rico@ymail.com)