CEBU City woke up to the news, Monday, September 29, 2025, that the pilot deployment of the Cebu Bus Rapid Transit (CBRT) project will be postponed another month because test runs showed it made traffic worse and that the City’s traffic management system, as it is, cannot cope.
The update displeased some people, particularly those who took advantage of the test run from Sept. 17 to 19 and rode the large, modern low‑floor/low‑entry, air-conditioned buses that got them faster and more comfortably, to where they needed to be.
These buses, provided by the firm Cebu Interim Bus System, ran in dedicated lanes and passed through those Kenneth Cobonpue-designed Foglia bus stops, where people either hopped on or hopped off, like in more metropolitan and highly urban areas abroad.
Unfortunately, conventional public utility jeepneys (PUJs) and the larger modern public utility vehicles (MPUVs) were still allowed to ply their regular destinations during the test run.
As a result, while commuters on the CBRT and its dedicated lane had faster rides, motorists relegated to the outer lanes reported increased congestion.
This was made worse when kamote driving set in. Some motorists were observed entering the bus lanes in places without traffic enforcers and at merging points.
Perhaps the visual that best accompanies this is that unfortunate MPUV that got stuck under a footbridge at Rain Tree Mall, also last Monday, after taking an unauthorized detour to avoid F. Ramos corner Gen. Maxilom Ave. traffic.
Allowing PUJs and the MPUVs to operate alongside the CBRT in the routes the CBRT serviced during the test run uncovered a key point of failure. It will stay a key point of failure if it remains not addressed by the time the CBRT goes into full-scale operations.
PUJs, MPUVs, private cars, motorcycles and other vehicles that barely fit three lanes at rush hour simply cannot be forced to fit into two lanes – the center and outer lanes – just so the CBRT can have a dedicated path. This will collapse traffic.
But phasing PUJs and MPUVs out of the road in favor of another transport platform is also unthinkable, given that operators, drivers and allied workers – the mekaniko and the more ubiquitous kundoktor – have families to support.
What options are there?
Past city administrations – including that of the late mayor Edgardo Labella and his immediate successors, former mayor Mike Rama and Raymond Garcia – have supported the CBRT project.
But they’ve also decreed a no-displacement stance.
They wanted a running CBRT, yes, but with PUJs and MPUVs getting integrated into the system instead of being simply phased out and removed from the road.
This is why their consensus has been to make sure that PUJs and MPUVs are given a different service area – like feeder routes and last-mile routes; destinations that the CBRT won’t go to.
I don’t know what the current administration’s plan for the CBRT is, and what values it espouses.
I don’t know what its plans are for those people behind the PUJs and MPUVs transport sectors, all of whom have families to support and feed.
I don’t know if it even cares.
To be honest, my thoughts go back to that unfortunate time when skewered meat sold by a barbeque vendor at Fuente got stepped on by an official – active in this administration – who demanded that the vendor and his kind clear out.
Monday’s headline news underscored the test run’s findings – the severe congestion, missing infrastructure, as well as stricter traffic enforcement – but not social impact, which by now should have already been adequately defined, measured, and planned for.
It also indicated that Cebu City Mayor Nestor Archival has called for a meeting this Friday, October 3.
But the meeting, according to the report, will be to find ways to strategically manage the new traffic flow, and find out how many enforcers and aides are required.
Mayor Archival has also reportedly ordered the Cebu City Traffic Office to intensify its public information campaign on the new lane configuration.
The mayor can always expand his agenda. He is the mayor after all.
But, as of Monday, the plight of PUJ and MPUV operators, drivers and their respective families is not in the schedule for a project that was planned as early back as 2008, with procurement starting around 2016, and initial construction commencing around 2019.
Maminaw na lang sa ta’g asa dagan ang pasada.