Ro-ro business heats up Cebu-Tubigon route

I got a call from Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Mr. Michael Lloyd Dino who reacted to the article that we wrote about my long-time pet project, the parallel road to Escario Street. My good friend, Glenn Soco, Chairman of the Infrastructure Committee of the Regional Development Council-7 earlier told me this was not funded for the General Appropriations Act for the fiscal year 2018. While this is true, Dino has continued to lobby for this project because he knows Cebuano motorists are already suffering from daily traffic congestion along Escario Street.

Although Dino told me the feasibility study on this road has already been approved and funded. Frankly speaking more than 10-years ago, I already had an idea that this project would cost some P600 million because we need to construct two bridges, one to span the Lahug Creek and the other to span the Guadalupe River. I have flown my Mavic Pro drone in these areas and taken a lot of photos of the area where the bridges would span. The one along Guadalupe River is more difficult because from Villalon Road, it is a sheer cliff to the Guadalupe River to connect to the roads that lead to Andres Abellana Street.

Meanwhile, during my phonecall with Dino, we already learned from the Japan International Cooperation Agency that traffic in Metro Manila cost some P3.6 billion daily. So I asked him, what is the JICA figure for Metro Cebu? If you considered the simple equation that Metro Manila is seven times larger than Metro Cebu, you can more or less gauge how much our traffic congestion costs us here.

But like what I asked earlier, what has the DPWH done to ease traffic in Metro Cebu? The answer is clear… nothing! This is why I suggested that heads should roll in the DPWH because these officials do not deserve to be paid their salaries! In Australia, Traffic Management is responsible for the creation of new roads, but here that job belongs to the DPWH and so far they are clueless on how to solve our traffic woes.