I am for the BRT

transportation system here. They had two other choices other than the BRT. There was also the Metro Rail Transit and the Light Rail Transit. The claim that setting up the BRT would be cheaper than the two other alternative was what attracted me to it.

Ihave been a fan of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system since Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña talked about it sometime during his previous three-year term (2007-2010). Okay, that would also mean I was once a fan of the younger version of the mayor. That was when the traffic problem in Metro Cebu had worsened enough for officials to think of setting up a mass transport system here. There were the MRT (Metro Rail Transit), LRT (Light Rail Transit), and the BRT.

What attracted me to the BRT was the claim that setting it up with be cheaper than unfurling an MRT or a BRT for the Metro. That was a no-brainer. The MRT and the LRT are systems dependent on trains and by extension coaches and rails. The BRT rely on buses. But the BRT system can only be cheaper if existing road networks are wide and road-right-of-way acquisition hassles and expenses get dispensed with.

I think Osmeña set the lobby ball rolling for and became obsessed with the BRT project in Metro Cebu in 2008-2009 especially after he visited Bogota in Colombia to observe the operation of the BRT there. (By the way, that trip also featured a travel to the US for his medical examination, remember?). Soon feasibility studies, informal and formal, featuring visits by World Bank and other experts in the Metro were conducted.

But the realization of the project was slower than the Osmeña-projected three to four years. (The man acted pessimistic but it turned out his estimate was too optimistic.) Fast forward eight years later (six years of that featuring Michael Rama as Cebu City mayor) and we are on the verge of implementing a project whose cost has ballooned from P10.6 billion to P16.9 billion (in World Bank loans, I would stress).

But the P10.6 billion (the extra P6.3 billion still needs National Economic Development Authority approval) is there and considering how we got here, I would therefore side with Osmeña in his conflict with Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Dino, who said he would lobby with President Rodrigo Duterte so the BRT project implementation would be stopped.

I think that is the problem with the constant change in administration sometimes. The new administration often acts like what we media people refer to as “parachute journalists.” They see the projects of the previous administration, especially one peopled by their bitter political rivals, and without going beneath the surface, come up arrogantly with shallow conclusions whether for or against the projects.

I was amused, for example, by Dino’s act of presenting a supposed expert on transportation systems who portrayed the BRT project negatively. But I actually found his arguments shallow. For example, he preached the virtues of the LRT system even if our kind of a BRT system is limited to a few Cebu City roads. Replacing that with an LRT would be way too expensive. The consensus has been that an LRT operation has to be at least Metro Cebu-wide.

But I would not dwell much on that except to say that the BRT has been subjected to years of study. What the BRT proponents have to do now is to again painstakingly explain the BRT concept to the naysayers, that is if the latter are objective opposers and not partisans.