DELA CRUZ
TRAFFIC REROUTING DRY RUN
The Department of Public Works and Highways in Central Visayas (DPWH-7) will push for the continuation of the suspended traffic rerouting dry run for the P683 million underpass project along the intersection of N. Bacalso Avenue and F. Llamas St. in Cebu City.
Engineer Roy dela Cruz, DPWH-7 project engineer, said they would ask the Cebu City Traffic Office to continue implementing the traffic rerouting scheme in the area, which was temporarily stopped after motorists complained about the dilapidated alternative roads used in the scheme.
Dela Cruz said they had started repairs along Tagunol St., which had been identified as the most dilapidated among the alternative roads in the area.
“These (road repairs) will really take a while especially in Tagunol St. since there are a lot of defects on the road. For Tagunol alone, maybe, it will take between one to two weeks,” Dela Cruz told Cebu Daily News.
However, he said he was hoping that the Tagunol St. repairs would be done by Saturday and by then they would make another request to the CCTO to continue the rerouting dry run and hope that it would be granted.
“We will ask CCTO to inspect Tagunol St. after the repairs, and we will request them to push through with the traffic dry run to avoid more delays. Anyway, Tagunol St. is the most problematic among all the alternative roads,” Dela Cruz said.
He said by then he hoped that they would also start work on the underpass project.
This despite their thrust to continue fixing other alternative roads in the scheme needing repairs, which included Quiot-Pardo road, Ganciang St., Gochan St. and Caimito St., among others.
The CCTO and the DPWH implemented a traffic dry run for the project last June 7 where the southbound lanes of N. Bacalso, in the portion in front of McDonald’s Mambaling, were closed to vehicular traffic.
It was supposed to continue the next day, but the CCTO suspended it after they observed heavy traffic along the alternative roads, which badly needed repairs.
The CCTO required the DPWH to finish repairing all the alternative roads first before the dry run would be continued and before the project would be started.
Dela Cruz said they already finished leveling the road along Tagunol St. and would be layering it with asphalt this week.
The entire underpass project is targeted to be completed by December 2018 or January 2019.
In order to cope with the delay in the project implementation, Dela Cruz said they would ask the project contractor to work on the project 24/7 once they would be given clearance to start.
He said if needed, the the DPWH might issue a suspension order against the contractor so that the days of delay would not be included in the counting of the days for the contract especially since they did not anticipate the need to repair the interior city roads to be used as alternative roads.
“We have to work on these road repairs because we are using these as detour roads for a national government project,” Dela Cruz said.