Metro Cebu traffic woes in the year of Duterte

Traffic builds up at the Bulacao highway in Talisay City for southern Cebu-bound vehicles (above) caused by the closure of the Tabunok Flyover which is undergoing repairs. Vehicles along the highway crawled bumper-to-bumper that even motorcycles (left), which only need a little space to navigate through traffic, had no room to escape the line of slow-moving vehicles passing through the highway. (CDN File Photo/Photos by Junjie Mendoza)

HEALTHCARE executive Clyde Teves has to be out of his house in Carcar City in southern Cebu before sundown.

He has to catch the 4:30 p.m. bus, which arrives in Cebu City’s south bus terminal along Natalio Bacalso Avenue at about 7 p.m.

Teves has enough time to ride a passenger jeepney to his workplace at the Cebu I.T. Park in Barangay Lahug in Cebu City before his work starts at 8 p.m.

In the past two months, it has taken Teves two and a half hours to get to Cebu City from Carcar, a distance of 42 kilometers — crossing three towns and another city — due to the fiestas and road repairs along the way.

On “normal” days, the travel usually takes about an hour and 30 minutes.

Despite the promise of the Duterte administration to solve the traffic problem in Cebu, Teves notes that nothing has changed since the assumption of the new administration on July 1, 2016.

In fact, “it’s worse than before,” he adds.

Longer commute

For those living in Metro Cebu, commuters now have to contend with being on the road for an hour, for a ride that used to take from only 10 to 15 minutes.

Shaneen Bargamento, a 22-year-old FX and investments trader from Lapu-Lapu City on Mactan Island, Cebu, agrees.

She notes that Mactan’s traffic has gotten worse in the past year due to many factors, such as the presence of more subdivisions on the island and more cars on the streets resulting from easy loan schemes.

Also, she adds, traffic lights in Lapu-Lapu City do not work, while traffic enforcers have the liberty to decide when to let vehicles pass at intersections.

Traffic has been identified as one of the major problems in the bustling metropolis that hosts the Mactan-Cebu International Airport, an export processing zone and a bevy of high-end resort-hotels and posh high-rise enclaves.

As early as July 2012, a study made by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) showed that at least P132 million worth of man-hours have been wasted daily due to Metro Cebu’s traffic woes.

And to think that the congestion in Metro Cebu five years ago was not even as bad as it is today.

Vehicle density

The present infrastructure cannot also cope up with the increasing number of vehicles on the roads.

The Land Transportation Office in Central Visayas (LTO-7) has recorded that from January to November in 2016 alone, the number of newly registered vehicles increase by 11,120 over the same period the previous year.

According to LTO-7, the office registered 152,476 vehicles for the 11-month period in 2016 compared to the 141,356 registered in 2015.

Lawmakers earlier mulled granting emergency powers to President Duterte to fix the traffic problem in Metro Manila and Metro Cebu late last year.

Last May, the House committee on transportation approved a bill that would grant the President powers in the next three years to open private subdivision roads, stop courts from issuing temporary restraining orders (TROs), and canceling contracts.

Although it passed the committee level, it has yet to be approved by both chambers of Congress, a requisite before the President can sign it into law.

Short-term solutions

Cebu Business Club (CBC) president Gordon Alan Joseph is surprised by the lack of improvement on the metropolitan’s traffic situation.

“I think the reason is that everyone is focused on the big-ticket infrastructure projects, but are completely forgetting the basics,” he says.

These include poor driver education and inadequate licensing requirements, poorly-trained and uncoordinated traffic enforcers with no communication facilities and inconsistent enforcement of traffic laws.

“If we work and focus on traffic management, there will be an immediate alleviation of the traffic, but no one is focusing on these and I am very surprised,” Joseph adds.

Indeed the focus of the national government is on infrastructure projects that will provide long term solution to road congestion.

There has been no discussion on traffic management, continuing drivers’ education, enforcers’ training, among others that can provide immediate solution to the congestion.

Unified effort

In a statement, Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Dino has said that the problem of traffic in Metro Cebu needs unified effort of both the national and local government.

The national government through the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and Department of Transportation (DOTr) will implement infrastructure projects and mass transport system.

One of these projects is the P50-billion Metro Cebu Expressway, a 74-km highland road and subway that will start in Naga City in the south and end in Danao City in the north.

Also in the pipeline are two coastal bypass roads. The first, to cost P25.5 billion, will provide an alternative route that will connect Mandaue City and the towns of Liloan and Consolacion in the north. The second is a P15.5-billion road connecting Talisay City, Minglanilla town and Naga City in the south.

The DPWH is also about to start the construction of the P683-million underpass project along the intersection of N. Bacalso Avenue and F. Llamas Street in Cebu City.

Another is the 2-km road artery project that will connect V. Rama Avenue to Gorordo Avenue in Cebu City, which is expected to start in 2018, at a cost of P1 billion.

Local government units, on the other hand, have been given a hand in solving their town traffic problems.

Cebu City, for example, will be implementing a P10-billion Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which aims to replace passenger jeepneys with buses as mode of public transportation.

Dino, however, wants the BRT project scrapped in favor of a Light Rail Transit (LRT) system to decongest Metro Cebu’s traffic.

“LRT will definitely solve traffic problem in Cebu. This kind of mass transport system will not steal large area of our existing roads because this may go both subway particularly in Cebu City area and above-surface beyond Cebu City,” said Dino.

Spare the President

Amid all the dissatisfaction over Cebu’s worsening traffic condition, one business leader at least think that it is a matter that the President should not be made responsible for.

Glenn Soco, Mandaue Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) president, says it seemed unfair that President Duterte will have to carry the burden of solving the traffic problem across the country, including Cebu.

“We have to understand that traffic is a result of progress. If we want to be the fastest growing economy in Asia, then we have to anticipate more challenges,” he stresses.

For Soco, the solution has to be a multi-agency and multi-sectoral approach, pointing out that the government is already taking steps to address infrastructure gaps that aim to serve as “partial solutions” to the metropolitan’s traffic problem.

Soco says the solution does not end there as all stakeholders need to take part in addressing the problem.

“Even ordinary citizens have a role in coming up with a solution. Overall, I think we are not doing bad as we can see the initiatives that have been undertaken by this administration,” he adds.Soco says political will, behavioral change, and the proper mindset are needed to be able to cope with the situation

Soco says political will, behavioral change, and the proper mindset are needed to be able to cope with the situation