Coming at a time when its continued support would have been most needed for a pioneering high-capacity public land transport project, the decision of the World Bank (WB) to shy away from the remaining phases of Cebu’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system is disappointing.
All along, we thought that the BRT would finally be fast-tracked since its opponents from the previous administration are no longer in power. Remember that the BRT was recommended for cancellation in 2018 despite its having secured WB funding support since 2014.
No less than former secretary Arthur Tugade of the Department of Transportation (DOTr) called for the BRT’s cancellation along with former presidential assistant for the Visayas Michael Dino, saying that it should not be implemented in Cebu City due to narrow roads.
Tugade and Dino earlier batted for an Integrated Inter-Modal Transport System (IITS) for Cebu which would have included a Light Railway Transit (LRT) and a BRT system. But in April 2018, both officials pushed for the latter’s non-implementation.
Part of the duo’s proposed IITS would have been a point-to-point bus system, a monorail in Lapu-Lapu City, LRT from Carcar City to Danao City and from Mandaue City to the Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA), and an Intelligent Transportation system.
Dino was even quoted as saying that the LRT will become the main arterial backbone of Cebu’s public mass transportation, with the other IITS components as feeder lines serving internal peripheries.
Reports further stated that a Singaporean-Chinese and Filipino consortium has proposed to build a US$3-billion LRT system, with a subway component in Cebu City and above-ground component from Talisay to Carcar and from Mandaue to Danao. A separate line was likewise proposed from Mandaue to MCIA.
Another proposed component in the IITS was a monorail system connecting MCIA to the hotels and resorts in Mactan Island.
I was shaking my head in disbelief at the time, having been connected with an office under the DOTr while also serving as a member of the Infrastructure and Utilities Committee of the Regional Development Council in Region 7. A lot of what were proposed had no supporting feasibility studies. Others simply sounded as conjectures that flew in the face of existing data. Not long after, I was reassigned to Region 3.
But since everyone likes to hear fantabulous conjectures, no one questioned the IITS yarn. Local governments that stood as beneficiaries of the proposed projects happily went along, wishing that such projects can be completed with a wave of a magic wand.
Back then, the “Build, Build, Build” slogan sounded so mesmerizing that no one raised doubts on the IITS’s feasibility and implementability given the Duterte administration’s timeline in power.
So here we are, seven years after the bravado proposals; no LRT, no subways, no above-ground rails either. The only thing that remains is the BRT-Phase 1 that was already approved by the WB before the advent of the Duterte administration. Blocking the completion of the BRT’s final two phases seem to be the only success that Tugade and Dino achieved for Cebu’s mass transportation.
The BRT’s final completion will thus be a leadership test to Mayor Nestor Archival and Vice Mayor Tomas Osmeña of Cebu City. But if we are to judge their capability to overcome this newest obstacle by the vicissitudes of their political careers, then the future of the BRT shouldn’t be dim.