One day in December not so long ago, south-bound travelers found themselves trapped in a monstrous traffic jam in Minglanilla. The line of stalled vehicles spanned kilometers of a national highway that was planned and built by short-sighted engineers. It did not help that at that time when they were needed most, the town’s traffic enforcers could not be found as they were out, attending their Christmas party.
Traffic is no longer as bad in Minglanilla. The curse, it seems, has moved to the north, particularly in Consolacion.
The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) estimates that it will take at least one and a half hours to travel from Minglanilla’s adjacent city, Naga to Consolacion. I don’t know how and when the DPWH got their numbers. It’s not important, anyway. In fact, it is irrelevant in the light of the government agency’s promise to cut down travel time between the two points to only 30 minutes and a little farther away to Danao City from three hours to 50 minutes.
Before you jump for joy and look silly, let me hasten to add that the promise was made many years ago and from all indications, it will take many more years before the promise can be fulfilled, if at all.
The Metro Cebu Expressway was supposed to be President Rodrigo Duterte’s “big ticket” project, the only one conceived during his term, in Cebu. The dream was to ensure “seamless travel” between the cities of Naga and Danao by cutting through mountains and traversing slopes in order to avoid the usual choke points in the old route.
The project consisted of three segments: 1) Minglanilla-Cebu City to Mandaue-Consolacion boundary, 2) Mandaue-Consolacion boundary to Danao City and 3) Naga to Minglanilla. Overall, the new roads were 72 kilometers long. The DPWH was tasked to build them.
The agency implemented the project on the second year of Duterte’s term, starting not with Segment 1 but Segment 3, a decision that was apparently dictated by the comparative ease in the acquisition of road right of way.
Five years and P1.3 billion later, the DPWH was able to build only five kilometers of road. And if the trend continues, it would take another 17 years before Segment 3 can be completed, said then DPWH Regional Director Edgar Tabacon in 2022. Which in turn means that it would take almost a century to finish the entire stretch. Holy cow!
Tabacon then endorsed the idea of delegating the construction of the road to the private sector. Why this was not the route taken from the very beginning puzzles me, considering the wealth of experience we had with government inability (I refuse to use incompetence because I am a Christian) to finish projects on time.
The DPWH website seems to imply that a decision has already been made to entrust the prosecution of the project to the private sector through a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) at an estimated cost of P94.07 billion. They already have a timeline for the bidding of consulting services, conduct of supplemental study, government approval and tender of PPP project and finally, PPP contract signing, which is scheduled in July 2024.
How long before the public can finally travel from Naga to Danao in less than an hour, they’re not saying yet. In the meantime, let’s just grin and bear it.