Cebu business group backs LRT project
The Cebu Business Club (CBC) expressed its support for a light rail transit (LRT) and an intelligent traffic management system in Cebu, noting the bus rapid transit (BRT) will fail to solve traffic woes in the city.
"The conditions needed for the success of the ill-fated BRT do not exist in Cebu City," CBC president Gordon Alan Joseph told The FREEM AN. The business leader also publicly expressed this statement in his official social media account.
His comments come after a consortium expressed intent to build an LRT in Cebu and amid the push by the Cebu City government for the establishment of the already approved Cebu BRT project.
"The roads are too narrow - and no road widening is planned except in depots and stations, which means that a 4-lane road will only have two narrow lanes left for vehicles," Joseph further said.
He said the Cebu BRT will require at least two full lanes plus a lane for the waiting area.
"Imagine what will happen if a car or truck breaks down and blocks the single available lane - or if there is an accident?" he said.
The CBC president said many experts have already said that the BRT will fail in Cebu.
"This has been said for over 4 or more years or longer. When we were invited to dinner with the World Bank executives in charge of the BRT, and we raised these issues, they said they would correct these in the engineering design - but they didn't," he noted.
"They said that we need to push through with the BRT because the money is there already," he added.
He explained BRT has succeeded in other countries but in Cebu the experts including French, Japanese and Filipino he talked to several times have said that the elements for a successful BRT do not exist.
"The BRT in its present design will manage about 20% of required passenger capacity. This means they won't be able to take the jeepneys off the roads," Joseph noted.
The business leader emphasized that what Cebu needs is an intelligent traffic management system that integrates the right solutions such as smart traffic lights, intersection improvements, traffic law enforcement and a mass transport system like LRT, among others.
"We need experts to plan this, not politicians," he stressed.
In an earlier press statement released by the Office of the Presidential Assistant for Visayas, a consortium has proposed to build an LRT in Cebu and it “expects to complete the process with the Department of Transportation (DOTr) this year” and to start construction by early next year once all permits and other documents are completed.
The consortium is composed of local and foreign companies.
Its representative, Chris Kou, said the proponents started the process with DOTr in the last quarter of 2017
“The proposal is to build an elevated LRT with a subway section at the central business district of Cebu City,” Kou was quoted as saying in earlier reports.
Proponents marked the estimate cost of the LRT project to $3 billion (US dollars).
Kou said Metro Cebu’s LRT will be funded through the “One Belt One Road” program of the Chinese government.
The project's first phase will substantially cover the entire Metro Cebu where the line will start from Carcar City in the south to Danao City in the north, and vice versa.
Kou said the first phase will comprise of two lines, the Central Line and second the Airport Line, which will have a bridge crossing from Cebu’s mainland to Mactan Island.
The first phase of the project will also establish a research, development, and technical support center that will train local skills related to rail eco-system.
The second phase will be the commuter rail. Its implementation will be subject to several factors such as economic, population, and future modern transport needs, among others.
The project’s first phase will be constructed within the shortest possible time, with all site works targeted for completion by 2022.
Regional Development Council chair Kenneth Cobonpue earlier said Cebu's unresolved traffic woes call for long-term and efficient solutions and not just bandaid ways to temporarily solve a problem which has cost the city billions in daily economic losses.
"Many people think that any solution is better than doing nothing at all but I disagree," Cobonpue said, noting that wrong answer to a problem like traffic is no different from giving the wrong medicine to a sick person.
Based on the initial results of a study being done by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Cebu's traffic problem has cost it P1.1 billion daily in economic losses.
JICA's “Master Plan Study and Institutional Development on Urban Transport System in Metro Cebu” is set to be completed in the last quarter of 2018.
"JICA has given us solutions almost a decade ago, but we failed to implement them early," Cobonpue emphasized. "Now, our political leaders are scrambling to build anything without thinking if they are really beneficial to the people."
"We at the RDC are picking up the pieces of the original JICA recommendation and endorsing projects based on a masterplan crafted by experts and technical people," Cobonpue further explained.