In a city striving for progress, priorities and actions speak volumes. Cebu City in 2025 finds itself at a pivotal crossroads — one that pits sleek train lines and rapid transit corridors against unfinished hospital buildings and patient wards that echo with a decade of delay.
The Metro Cebu Subway project is being championed as a transformative solution to the city’s growing congestion, with feasibility studies already moving toward national endorsement. Parallel to this, the Cebu Bus Rapid Transit (CBRT) system is inching forward, though not without political friction. Former Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama and outgoing Governor Gwendolyn Garcia have clashed over jurisdiction and implementation, muddying the waters of an otherwise needed public service.
Both infrastructure projects are built on the promise of decongesting traffic, fueling economic growth, and future-proofing Cebu’s urban core. They are ambitious, visible, and politically appealing symbols of modernity. But their glossy renderings risk overshadowing a grim reality that continues to unfold just down the road.
The Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) has become the city’s most symbolic unfinished project. Originally demolished in 2014 after the Bohol earthquake, the hospital remains partially completed more than a decade later. Despite multiple groundbreakings, pronouncements, re-budgeting, and delays, patients still rely on a temporary facility—one that lacks adequate capacity and comprehensive facilities for public care.
Recent statements by newly proclaimed mayor Nestor Archival claim that the CCMC is “one year from completion,” a familiar phrase that echoes past assurances. Meanwhile, the City Council faces scrutiny over proposed rate hikes in hospital services — defended as necessary for sustainability, but seen by many as a burden on poor patients who have waited years for a decent public hospital.
It’s not just a matter of steel versus stethoscope; it’s a question of public trust. Infrastructure is visible; hospitals are unfinished. A subway opening can be televised, a mother giving birth in an overcrowded temporary ward cannot.
The prioritization of one over the other reflects more than just budget decisions; it reflects political will. Transportation projects are often front-loaded with external funding, ribbon-cutting opportunities, and national visibility. Healthcare, on the other hand, is often viewed as a cost center rather than a legacy project. Yet, what kind of progress do we speak of if the sick and vulnerable are left waiting for over 10 years?
There is no denying Cebu needs both better transport and healthcare. But the imbalance in execution exposes a deeper governance dilemma. As the subway dreams glide forward and the CBRT struggles through bureaucratic friction, the CCMC reminds us that real development cannot leave behind those whose lives don’t fit into grand architectural blueprints.
Progress should not be measured solely by trains and tunnels — but by how a city treats the wounded while it builds the future.