Mass Transport System for Cebu City

CEBU, Philippines – In a perfect world; given a stable growing population, a predictable economic growth rate and urbanization or urban migration, it would be possible to design a city road network and transportation system that will not result in traffic congestion. An ideal grid road network with interconnected main thoroughfares and minor streets can be constructed.  Public mass transport system can be designed and constructed to move a certain amount of people from point A to point B.

An average speed of 40 kilometers per hour (kph) for vehicles within the city could be achieved, bicycle lanes and wide sidewalks can be provided. But the reality is that the Cebu City road network and transport system came about mostly out of immediate necessity and political exigency - with minimal strategic and long term planning. No mass public transport system was envisioned except the jeepneys that came out of the remnants of World War II.

In Cebu City, jeepneys carry 65 percent of the total daily person trips, taxis and V-hires carry 10 percent by the, and private vehicles carry 25 percent. While this approach is not entirely irrational, since it did and still does address the public transport need, it addressed only the short term problems and just pushed the problem to a shorter time horizon. Cebu City was adequately forewarned of what was to come - given its road network of over 100 kilometers, and with 67 percent of its population mostly within 23 square kilometers of flat land, and with the influx of migrants from other provinces.

The Philippine population is now at a little over 100 million by the end of 2014, and Cebu province accounting for 6 to 7 percent of this total, we are looking now at a population of 7 million people in Cebu province. Cebu City and the neighboring towns and cities of Talisay, Minglanilla, Lapu-Lapu, Mandaue, Consolacion, Lilioan, Cordova, and Danao are home to at least 40 percent, which, together with a daytime population from the rest of the towns and the neighboring provinces, would bring the Metro Cebu population to 3.4 million.

Not surprisingly, Cebu province also accounts for 6 to 7 percent of the total registered vehicles in the country, which in 2014 was over 10 million. So we in Cebu Province have to contend with 650,000 vehicles, 65 percent or 422,500 of them are in Metro Cebu. And this figure is increasing by 11 percent annually, as 16 percent of the annual sales of vehicles in the country since 2013 have been in Cebu province. Add to this the growing popularity of motorcycles, for personal use or for tricycles or "habal-habal," then we can appreciate the magnitude of the transport and traffic problems we face.

The current state of transport and traffic.

The faster growth rate of the Philippine economy since 2011, which began to trickle down to the middle-class in 2013, is the primary cause of the increase in the volume of vehicles on the road. Not just in terms of the number of vehicles, but also in terms of more time on the road for the vehicles, as the heightened economic activity leads to more deliveries of goods and more people to transport.

By 2013, traffic in Metro Cebu, especially during school and office rush hours, was becoming a problem. There was congestion in the intersections and the major arterial roads, slowing down average speeds to 20 kph, from 30, in Cebu City. By 2014, the average speed had further gone down to 10 kph during rush hours, and motorists were already complaining. The national government thru the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), and the local governments are trying their best to catch-up by widening the roads, building new roads, flyovers, bridges and other infrastructures.

But the reaction is at least 10 years behind as far as Metro Cebu is concerned. The traffic management group of Cebu City, the CITOM, and of the other Metro Cebu cities have accordingly improved it's traffic enforcement and education, and did some engineering improvements of the intersections and local roads, to alleviate the current traffic situation. The SCATS, a computerized and adaptive traffic light system, was installed in Cebu City in1990, and Mandaue City installed a computerized timed traffic light system in 2013. Overpasses and flyovers were also constructed in some parts of Metro-Cebu in 2005 to 2009. New roads were opened in the new urban commercial centers and some roads were widened. Roadside parking in Cebu City and Mandaue City was rationalized with the designation of "pay" parking areas.

What is being done?

Road widening, road re-blocking, cementing, and repaving were resumed in 2013 by the DPWH and the local governments, to continue up to 2016 and beyond. Inter-city coordination in traffic management is ongoing, to synchronize traffic regulations and traffic flow volume between cities. More aggressive traffic enforcement and education is in the works in the whole Metro Cebu area, and Cebu City will be implementing CCTV/ No-Contact traffic enforcement together with the Land Transportation Office before the end of this year.

A public mass transport system for Cebu - which is the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) for Cebu City - has already been approved and funded. Detailed engineering has commenced last month so that construction will start in 2016. BRT will transport at least 320,000 passengers per day in its north to south to north route, from Talamban to Bulacao, and will displace half of the public and private vehicles in this route. This will initially be a 23-kilometer route, and extensions will be made after 2018, to further emphasize that it will be more cost effective for commuters to ride the BRT than drive their cars. A 176-vehicle fleet of two-door, double-sided Euro IV diesel buses will traverse the route.

To minimize the number of vehicles traversing Cebu City to go to destinations outside the city, the third Cebu-Mactan Bridge is already in the detailed engineering stage of the Metro Pacific Build-Operate-Transfer proposal, and will be for "price challenge" by 2016. Construction will commence in 2017. This means that vehicles going to the Airport or other places in Mactan from south of Cebu City will no longer pass thru the city proper and vice-versa, further reducing vehicle traffic in Cebu City. There are also already existing plans to have other seaports north and south of Cebu City so that cargoes going north or south will no longer cross Cebu City.

What more is needed?

While road widening, more roads and linkages have to be done for better traffic flows; the bigger impact in alleviating Metro-Cebu's traffic problem will be in having more mass transport systems similar to BRT. It could be a subway system or a light rail transport system. Cost consideration and cost recovery would be a major factor in these projects, but if Cebu will continue to grow as a metropolitan city, these have to be seriously considered. We have to be more efficient in transporting more people in a given space, and the only way to do it, is to move them in larger containers, buses or railcars.

Geography, topography and other spatial considerations has a lot to do in the choice of transport systems in a given area. Los Angeles and other cities with wide open spaces are private vehicles or automobile cities. Public mass transport or buses are few and far between there and probably account for less than 5 percent of the vehicles in the city. In contrast, San Francisco, HongKong, Singapore, and other cities with small land areas or are hemmed in by the sea and the mountains have very efficient public mass transit systems.

Moreover, as cities with high population growth spills out its working people to the city's peripheries, the only efficient way to move them to their places of work in the city is via a mass public transport systems. Noticeable also is the presence of a mass transport system from every major airport to the city centers. Public mass transport systems for Metro Cebu is the only way to go, if we want a more livable and sustainable place.

Beyond these mass transport system for Metro Cebu are ideas for a more livable and sustainable Metro Cebu, namely: vertical growth of the city as more people live in high rise buildings near their places of work, and would only need to walk or bike to their workplaces and homes; private car ownership limitation by making it expensive to own a car or drive a car to the city center; population and livelihood dispersal by creating economic centers away from existing economic centers. Brazil did this by creating Brazilia, and China is doing it now by building two new cities every year away from existing urban centers.