Osmeña presents own “basket of solutions”

CEBU, Philippines —  Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña will submit his own version of “basket of solutions” that will address the traffic problem of the city to the Department of Transportation (DOTr).

In his press conference yesterday, the mayor said he will propose to include his solutions to DOTr’s basket of solutions for the city’s traffic woes.

“They’re supposed to propose a basket of solutions. They didn’t even ask me. They know it all. I have so many things that I can add,” he told reporters.

His solutions that he wants incorporated in DOTr’s basket of solutions are; Integrated Smart Traffic Signalling System; provincial and inter-city passenger transfer stations or terminals; bicycle lanes; automated ticketing or fare collection system; special bus routes or services for call center workforce; opening of Camp Lapu-Lapu; special bus routes for college students of mountain barangays; and ask Land Transportation Office to stop sitting on registrations of motorcycles.

This is on top of the city’s Bus Rapid Transit project, the mayor said.

Osmeña said he will ask City Administrator Nigel Paul Villarete to submit his proposal to DOTr.

Earlier this month, the DOTr and Office of the Presidential Assistant for Visayas (OPAV) released press statements about the inclusion of BRT in the planned Integrated Inter-Modal Transport System (IITS) for Metro Cebu.

Under the IITS, projects that include are Point-to-point (P2P) bus system; Monorail in Lapu-Lapu City; Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in three-lane roads; Light Rail Transit (LRT) from Carcar to Danao Line and Mandaue to Airport Line; and Intelligent Transportation System.

However, Osmeña said the BRT project is already taking so long to be implemented because of the apprehensions of the project’s critics.

“This BRT is taking so long. So long that would make Cebu better because they want something that would take longer. Samot,” he said.

As of now, Osmeña said he was told that some of the employees of the Cebu BRT-Project Implementation Unit that were not renewed last March were rehired.

“One of the problems is that they lay off our technical consultants. Well, they have been reinstated. That’s good news. That means we’re back on track,” he said.

The mayor said the chances that the BRT project is now better than the previous months, as OPAV and DOTr earlier moved for the cancellation of the project.

He hoped that the BRT project will now move as DOTr included BRT in its basket of solutions.

However, the OPAV said BRT will not work on Cebu's narrow roads and cannot be a viable solution to Metro Cebu's worsening traffic, as it will only further reduce the existing small capacity of Cebu's road network.

Allocating dedicated lanes for BRT on narrow roads will only contribute to the worsening traffic problem of the metropolis, the OPAV said.

Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Dino said that the P2P bus system is seen to be the fastest to implement.

“There’s already an established system of SM MyBus that it will compliment with other mass transit systems. All we need to do is to add more units,” he said.

Dino said the DOTr is going for a monorail system in Lapu-Lapu City.

The monorail, he said, will become Mactan Island’s transport system, connecting Mactan Cebu International Airport to different hotels and resorts in the tourist island.

To cater to the inter-city passengers, IITS will have as major component the LRT system which will span from Carcar to Danao.

A Singaporean-Chinese-Filipino consortium has submitted a proposal to construct a  $3-billion LRT system, with a subway component in Cebu City and above ground component from Talisay to Carcar and from Mandaue to Danao.

“LRT will become the most efficient mass transport system, with other IITS components complimenting this system,” Dino said.

The IITS is developed after due consideration on Metro Cebu’s road profile and the fast-growing need of efficient mass transport systems in bigger, inter-connected cities, such as Cebu, Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu, and Talisay and neighboring municipalities.

The DOTr is also considering construction of flared intersections, road widening, and intelligence signaling systems as “other basket of solutions” to traffic congestion in Metro Cebu. — GAN (FREEMAN)