BRT partially operational by December next year

CEBU, Philippines — The Cebu Bus Rapid Transit project, which has been stalled for several years now, will be operational as scheduled.

Mark Steven Pastor, assistant secretary for road transport infrastructure at the Department of Transportation, said the BRT will already be partially operational by December 2021 and fully operational by May 2022.

Pastor revealed this in an interview over Mugstoria Ta with Assistant Secretary Jonji Gonzales of the Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas.

“We maintain that even we were struck by Covid pandemic, we remain to target partial operation by Dec. 2021 and full operations by May or 2022,” said Pastor.

He said that there is an ongoing review of the design and build or the detailed engineering design of the CBRT Package 1. Package 1 encompasses the construction of four BRT stations.

The DED includes the drawings, reports, bills of quantity and documents.

There is also an ongoing finalization of the DED Package 2, which includes parcellary mapping, said Pastor.

“We are pushing for the same schedule even though we incurred delay through our consultants. Yung parcellary natin, they could not go on the ground, and make the actual parcellary mapping pero we devised a catch-up plan para hindi natin magalaw po yung ang ating December 2021 partial operability, as well as the full operations by May 2020,” he said.

During partial operation, there will be four BRT stations covering the Cebu South Bus Terminal to Capitol along Osmeña Boulevard, which has a total distance of 2.6 to three kilometers. This is the dedicated bus lane service for the Cebuanos.

For the time being, there is a so-called Cebu interim bus service (CIBUS) that mimics the BRT operations, thanks to the push made by LTFRB chairman Martin Delga III together with the OPAV.

The interim bus service resumed its operations last September after the suspension of mass transportation due to COVID-19 months earlier. — JMD (FREEMAN)