Dad to ask DPWH to postpone work on south corridor projects

TUMULAK

Request to prevent traffic caused by underpass project in Cebu City from worsening

Cebu City Councilor David Tumulak will ask the Department of Public Works and Highways in Central Visayas (DPWH-7) to postpone some of the road projects in Cebu City to avoid worsening the traffic experienced in the southern part of the city because of the ongoing work on the underpass project there.

Tumulak said he would meet with District Engineer Ade Jose Gauran Jr. of the DPWH-7 to ask him to postpone some of the road projects especially in the south corridor of the city.

He was referring to the road concreting projects in Tagunol St. and E. Sabellano St. after he met with executives of the contractor, WTG Construction, who informed him about these projects.

He said that the contractor did an ocular inspection last week and told him that they were already ready to implement the projects.

“If this will push through, mas grabe nga kahoot nga trapiko atong masinati dinha (If this will push through, expect traffic in the south corridor to get worse),” Tumulak said.

He cited the ongoing construction of an underpass on N. Bacalso Avenue as the basis of his observation.

He said projects like these would be an added burden to the commuters and motorists passing through the area.

“Mangayo ta og gamayng pabor nila (DPWH) nga dili usa ipatuman ang mga road concreting projects because ongoing pa ang tunnel (We will ask a favor from DPWH — to not implement the road concreting projects because the tunnel project is still ongoing),” he said.

The Tagunol St. and E. Sabellano St. projects are funded by the national government.

Francisco Ouano, Cebu City Transportation Office (CCTO) operations chief, said that at present they diverted vehicles going to the southern part of Cebu to E. Sabellano St. while the DPWH closed F. Llamas St. for phase three of the underpass project.

Ouano also said that they are diverting vehicles, which were supposed to pass N. Bacalso Ave. to Tagunol St. corner Cabreros St.

Engineer Roy dela Cruz, the project engineer of the underpass project, said that it would be difficult if these road concreting projects would push through.

Dela Cruz also called on the district engineer to defer the implementation of these road projects until they could finish working with the phase three of the underpass project.

“Wala ko kita sa plan where exactly sa Tagunol, unsa ka taas ang concreting, and how long siya nga project, but definitely (it will affect the traffic situation right now) kay diha man gipangdivert ang mga sakyanan nga affected sa N. Bacalso,” Dela Cruz told Cebu Daily News in a phone interview. (I have not seen the plan where exactly in Tagunol, how long a stretch of the street that they would work on, and how long the project will be completed. But definitely this will affect the traffic situation right now because vehicles affected from the N. Bacalso Ave. project are being diverted to those streets.)

Meanwhile, Cebu City Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella said that the City Council would look “promptly and seriously” into the plan of Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña to ask the City Council to declare a state of emergency so that public utility vehicles would be allowed to pass through the Cebu South Coastal Road (CSCR).

“This will require a review of the policy considerations that were the bases for limiting the use of CSCR to certain types of vehicles,” Labella said in a press statement sent to CDN.

Last week in his press conference, Osmeña said that the executive department is considering asking the council to declare a state of emergency to allow Public Utility Jeepneys (PUJs) to pass through the CSCR to decongest the traffic in the south corridor because of the underpass project.

Labella said that the worsening traffic in the south corridor could have been avoided if before the implementation of the projects the city and the DPWH would have laid out contingency plans for traffic.

He said that if certain city officials had exercised more prudence and not plunged recklessly into undertaking a project that had been shelved by the previous administration, then the traffic situation would not have been this bad.

Labella said that they know then that both the proponents and the implementing agency had no contingency plans to mitigate the traffic which they were certain the construction of the Mambaling tunnel would bring about.

He said that they could have demanded that alternate routes be developed and access roads widened before the DPWH would give the contractor the notice to proceed.

“But for reasons that only the mayor could explain, as soon as he took over, he disregarded our previous warnings and prodded the DPWH to start the project of his political ally, the Cebu City south congressman, without asking for traffic mitigating measures. That was, and remains, unforgivable,” Labella said.