Cable cars in city?

CEBU, Philippines —  The idea of putting up cable cars going to the upland areas of Cebu City will be among the topics to be discussed in the upcoming first ever mobility summit in the city.

Lawyer Kent Francesco Jongoy, Cuenco's executive assistant, said apart from reducing heavy traffic, the establishment of cable cars will help boost the tourism and economic activities in the mountain barangays.

“Mostly during our route going uphill, we experience traffic because most of the people are going towards our highlands, so it is a very good development if we will have cable cars going up because as we can see, expansion is not really one of the best ways towards reliving our roads from vehicular volume,” Jongoy said.

“We could also give economic boost to our constituents in the hilly land and not only economic boost but we could have good access… It's better that we have alternative modes of transportation, not only alternative but convenient, efficient modes of transportation, which is not only feasible but very much modern,” he added.

At least 80 participants, both from the private and public sectors, are expected to attend the two-day summit, which will feature international speakers.

The event will be held on September 26 to 27, 2022 and will revolve around the theme, “Cebu City Mobility Summit: Moving People Not Cars.”

The convenor’s group for the event is led by the office of Councilor James Anthony Cuenco who chairs the City Council’s Committee on Transportation.

Cebu City Transportation Office (CCTO) executive director Paul Gotiong said they hope to form a long-term plan on how to manage the streets and traffic situation in the city through the different inputs from summit participants.

On the first day of the summit, CCTO will present the current transportation situation of the city, as well as its traffic management system.

Some of the road infrastructure projects on the way like the Cebu Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and the concept of having a monorail and cable cars going to upland barangays will also be highlighted.

The second day will be a workshop for participants during which they will present their inputs.

Jongoy said through these inputs, they hope to come up with better solutions on the traffic problems in the city, and to also have better and efficient mobility schemes here.

“In the conceptualization of this mobility summit, we also tried to look up with many best practices from our first world countries like UK and Singapore because we are in the direction towards the mayor's vision of having Singapore-like Cebu City,” Jongoy said.

“The best thing that we would like to see is how these innovations or modernization in the field of transportation, mostly in public transportation, can be applied here in Cebu City… We would like to adapt their best practices in a way that it can be developed or applicable here in the city so that we could harness our way towards Singapore-like Cebu City,” he added.  – JMO (FREEMAN)