Citom to CCTO

Over 10 years ago, two “reorganizational” ordinances were passed in Cebu City. One evolving the erstwhile Cebu City Traffic Operations and Management (or Citom) Committee, which was then under the Office of the Mayor, into the Cebu City Transportation Office or CCTO, and the other reorganizing the Cebu City Planning and Development Office (CPDO). The former wasn’t just a “name” or hierarchical change. As the name implies, Citom’s purpose was managing traffic. CCTO is about transportation. Traffic is not synonymous with transportation.

In fact, transportation is more akin to mobility. Some of us were actually mulling to request for a name change again from CCTO to CCMO (Cebu City Mobility Office) to truly reflect what the department was conceptualized to manage. The difference might be slight and seems like a gray area, but oftentimes, people think of traffic whenever we hear the word transportation. It’s not. Transportation, or mobility deals with how a city’s people or population moves each day, primarily in connection with economic productivity, which in simplest sense, is how we go to work from our homes (and vice-versa) each day. Traffic deals with the flow of vehicles.

Traffic operations and management may still be part of the overall domain of transportation or mobility, of course, which is why it is still included in the CCTO organizational structure, a significant part in fact. And CCTO has not been neglecting this since then --it’s easy since they have been doing this ever since they started as Citom. But it’s not their main raison d'être --mobility is, and on this concern, CCTO still has a lot of evolving to do. How will our residents go to work in the future? What transport modes shall we prefer in the future? What are their modal shares? How are these planned in reference to where people live and where they work? Would changing daily work schedules help?

This last question finds an example in two proposals currently being floated in Manila --changing from a five-day working week to a four-day working week; and changing (selectively) from an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. working hour day to something else. These affect both transport modes and traffic congestion. Mobility involves where people live and work, how they move, and when, and it is the government's responsibility to work these out. More specifically, it is CCTO’s mandate, which, to the best of my knowledge, they have yet to start, working together with CPDO, of course. But it has to start.

Unfortunately, even the basic mandate of planning for transport modes and their modal split has not been addressed yet. The planned Bus Rapid Transit, already in its 13th year in the making, has not been built yet, and the planning was entirely dictated by people outside of City Hall. Elsewhere around the world, a city’s mobility challenges are addressed by its city government, not by the state. CCTO would have had the excellent opportunity to prove its worth, beyond merely serving as traffic aides. Maybe not their fault as their superiors were also not directing them to do so or have not emphasized the importance. At the end of the day, the city continues to grow and mobility will continue to be a challenge.