I find it personally very amusing that like clockwork, every cycle of one or two months there will be yet again news on the closure of Kennon Road, just after it has been opened either in partial or in Full Capacity.
The quote, I believe, goes thus:
“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes and the perpetual repairs of Kennon Road.”
I am not privy to the Sisyphean hill that keeps this venerable highway in a limbo of existence. Part of it seems to be just the permanent fragility of the road; the slightest bit of weather disturbance seemingly collapses a portion of it, enough to once again force a closure.
The latest was from roadslip, and there is no definitive answer to when the road will be up to scratch again, but more importantly, it is not clear when exactly Kennon Road is supposed to become resilient enough that closures would be the deviation, not the norm.
To my knowledge, this has been an issue with Kennon since long before I first set foot in the industry, and as early as my first ever year in the paper this has been a longstanding issue.
But the question that has to be asked is why – especially since Kennon is far from a low-relevance highway; Kennon is one of the main entryways into Baguio, which commands a significant portion, a lion’s share of all entry into the Cordillera.
For as far as my meager memory stretches back into the recesses of my career, there has been one or more ongoing projects to improve Kennon. The term, I believe, was “all-weather road,” a road that would never have to worry about the stresses of the environs in order to be safe to pass, or passable at all.
This is a matter that has persisted through administrations; personal recollection alone places this as an already old and ongoing matter as early as the most recent Domogan term – maybe someone could verify if it dates back to even the earlier Domogan administrations.
Part of the problem, I imagine, is that Kennon Road falls into a hodgepodge of different jurisdictions and bureaus in the bureaucracy. It falls under public works and highways purview, but also as a road connected to Baguio and portions of Benguet, it also falls under those jurisdictions to some extent.
With the latest closure of Kennon then, the question is not “when will Kennon be the all-weather road that was promised,” but “will Kennon ever be the all-weather road that was promised?” Similar syntax, but one presupposes an eventual success, which is seeming less and less likely.
