City to send outline of activities for BRT to DOTr

The Cebu City’s executive department will send a letter to the Department of Transportation outlining the activities needed to resume the Cebu Bus Rapid Transit project.

City Administrator Nigel Paul Villarete said the letter will be sent to DOTr next week before Mayor Tomas Osmeña leaves for his minor hernia operation in Houston, Texas.

“We have already drafted the letter to DOTr outlining the activities we believe need to be mobilized and engaged and I hope the mayor can sign it Monday morning,” Villarete said.

Last Friday afternoon, the Investment Coordination Committee-Cabinet Committee of NEDA has green lighted anew the P16.3 billion Cebu BRT project.

Osmeña, for his part, considered the development as his best gift received on his 70th birthday last July 26.

“This is long overdue. We are losing millions every month in interest fees because of a failure to implement. Even COA has recommended that charges be filed,” he said in a Facebook post.

The mayor said he is no confident that the project will not be scrapped after the decision of the NEDA ICC CC last Friday.

Osmeña said one of the actions that the city will do is to ask DOTr to rehire the employees of the Cebu BRT Project Implementation Unit to ensure that the resumption of the implementation of the project.

“I’m very confident now. Finally. Finally, after so many years of fighting just to get what we need for Cebu,” he told reporters.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia said the decision and commitment to get the project moving is “firm.”

Villarete said there are particular activities that were delayed in the implementation of the BRT projects. These are hiring of the Technical Support Consultancy; social management consultancy, renewal of employees of Project Implementation Unit; reinstatement of the BRT budget under the 2019 budget of DOTr; land acquisition aspect of the project; downloading of funds for the greening program; evaluation of the detailed engineering design, among others.

To recall, the implementation of the P16.3 – billion project has been suspended after DOTr and OPAV recommended for its cancellation in April this year.

However, DOTr and OPAV included BRT in the planned Integrated Inter-Modal Transport System (IITS) for Metro Cebu.

This IITS recommended by DOTr was approved by the NEDA-ICC-CC meeting last Friday afternoon.

In his July 27, 2018 letter to Pernia, DOTr Secretary Arthur Tugade said the department decided to implement a “Metro Cebu Intermodal and Integrated Transport System (MCIITS), which will include, among others, the CBRT, skytrain project, Intelligent Transportation Systems, Light Rail Transit, greenways project, among others.”

DOTr also committed to fast track the implementation of the BRT so that the first phase of the project will be operational by June 2021.