[] The plan: Sanggunian will adopt a stand next session and present it to Mayor Rama, with a letter from transportation committee head James Cuenco, appealing for the mayor's support
[] Most likely course of action, from among three options presented by two local urban planners: a Bulacao-to-Ayala test route costing an additional P100 million, before deciding on the other packages
[] A radical proposal from the local experts: transfer management of Cebu BRT project from Department of Transportation to Cebu City LGU
CEBU City Councilor James Anthony Cuenco will plead in a letter to Mayor Michael Rama to "pilot-test" the Cebu Bus Rapid Transit (CBRT) line from Bulacao, Pardo to Ayala Business Park as the city's suggested option to save the project. With an additional P100 million, the line would be operational in six months, to be assessed if it would work.
Tagged as #2B in the presentation of urban planner Rene Santiago during the City Council executive session Wednesday, April 3, 2024, the option aims to save the CBRT project, budgeted to cost P28.78 billion (increased by Neda last October 13, 2023 from P16.3 billion).
Package 1 was to cover 2.6-kilometer bus-way with four stations, and was scheduled in January 2021 to be operational December that year. That didn't happen. This April in the year 2024, there's instead a proposal to modify the route and complete a Bulacao-to-Ayala line first.
That would be, IF Mayor Rama would agree -- for the Cebu City Government to present a unified stand -- and IF the CBRT mechanism on project changes, involving the National Government through Neda and maybe the funding organizations, would allow it.
CUENCO LETTER TO MAYOR RAMA. Councilor Cuenco, City Council transportation committee chairman, told me Friday, April 5, he'll write the letter to the mayor; Councilor Dondon Hontiveros will hand-carry it to the chief executive; and Minority Floor Leader Nestor Archival Sr. will file the resolution expressing the Sanggunian consensus in its regular session next Wednesday, April 10.
Meantime, Cuenco said, he asked the secretariat to provide the mayor, all councilors, DOTr, and Neda with a transcript and video of the Sanggunian session that heard local urban planners Rene Santiago and Nigel Paul Villarete.
'EVERYTHING WENT WRONG.' Transportation resource persons Santiago and Villarete suggested bold steps to rescue the BRT, including:
[] Santiago's proposal for the transfer of project management Department of Transportation to the local government of Cebu City, and
[] Villarete's "hope" for completing the Bulacao-Ayala route "as test pilot."
In six months, Santiago said, the line will be completed and decision makers may choose to terminate the project "to cut losses" or proceed with the remaining packages of the project.
Villarete -- a former city administrator, under then mayor Tomas Osmeña, who wrote in 2008 to Neda and funders about the project -- told the City Council there were "so many things wrong" ("everything went wrong") that have piled up and are "so hard to correct now."
HE TOLD WORLD BANK SO. Santiago said that in 2014 he informed the World Bank the Cebu BRT would fail, partly because of implementation problems and partly for technical defects. He said before the City Council last Wednesday he wasn't glad that the state of the project has proved him right.
LGU'S THREE OPTIONS. Amid dire assessment and prediction, Santiago said deciders on the Cebu BRT will have these "options":
[1] Continue with what's going on ("business as usual"), "unhampered" by criticisms and objections, and get a "finished product" by 2028, if DOTr can deliver or if not, Santiago estimated, by 2030;
[2-A] Complete Package 1 before proceeding with the rest of the packages. Chances are (90 percent, he said), it would be "terminated" because of "traffic in that short section."
[2-B] Doing the Bulacao-Ayala line, with the whole line, Santiago said, "operational in six months," which by then can be assessed to determine the fate of BRT's Packages 2 and 3.
ROADBLOCKS AHEAD: Would the City Council adopt a course of action, which Mayor Rama would agree with and push to DOTr? Would the Cebu BRT decision makers based in Manila agree to the option LGU Cebu City would propose, that is, if the adopted mechanism for project changes would allow it?
On the LGU's part alone, the chief executive and the city legislature have not been exactly speaking as one about the project. A suggestion in the City Council by key councilors to terminate the Cebu BRT drew last January 12, 2023 sharp response from the mayor, highlighted by the near-expletive "Stupid!"
As to the options drawn by local transportation experts Santiago and Villarete, how would they be seen by the experts in Manila who've been working on the BRT project? Wouldn't it become a case of our-experts-against-their-experts? On claims of failure and "everything going wrong," what if their facts and assessments differ from our experts' facts and conclusions? Manila-based Neda, led by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., will probably be the arbiter if facts and perceived state of the project don't match?
LGU'S COMMON CONCERN. The traffic mess, which the BRT construction has worsened if not primarily caused, must be a common concern in the LGU, given especially the coming election season.
It would be a seriously damaging issue to dominant Partido Barug, whose key leaders ironically are the ones helping fuel it on the public stage. Mayor Rama might regain the confidence of his Barug allies in the City Council, notably Cuenco and Jocelyn Pesquera, by joining forces with them on the BRT dispute, starting with a united LGU solution to the problem.