All hail the LRT! But be prepared

BERSALES

Like manna from heaven, the announcement by a consortium of Chinese companies to set up at their own expense a Light Rail Transit (LRT) system linking the seven cities and five municipalities of Metropolitan Cebu, must be welcomed.

Albeit there are already questions about how this project was negotiated, there can be no arguing that the LRT is long overdue.

Over two million people now live in the metropolitan area of Cebu and the estimates are that by 2050, this will reach 5 million.

The time is now to begin the infrastructure that will help move people anytime way ahead of its time.

And the LRT is just one of them.

The Mega Cebu plans, if indeed they will see the light of day, include a circumferential road running from Liloan to Minglanilla, a seven-kilometer Talisay-Minglanilla Coastal Road; a second Mandaue- Tayud Consolacion highway with a second Cansaga Bay Bridge, etc.

All these are intended to make Cebu not only a business haven but also a livable place. Right now P1.1 billion is lost due to the absence of these vital transport infrastructure.

So what is the future now for the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system that Mayor Tomas Osmeña has been advocating ever since he saw the system in operation in Bogota way back in the mid-1990s?

It’s been 20 long years now and the idea of a BRT in Cebu remains in limbo.

This, despite a World Bank loan package already intended for its implementation way back in 2014, if I’m not mistaken.

As far as many in the private sector think, both are not incompatible.

I remember writing about this in a previous column way back in 2014.

An LRT obviously cannot service all the streets and highways of Metro Cebu.

At best, it can run on a single line going north and another single line going south, for starters.

When entering the most congested areas, especially Cebu and Mandaue cities, it must go underground, while avoiding many of its historic buildings and sections.

One line will most probably divert from Mandaue to go to Mactan and into the airport there which will need that LRT very badly and soon.

But beware! There will be traffic congestion in certain areas when the LRT line is constructed, whether aboveground or underground.

And we better prepare. Or more to the point, all government agencies involved in traffic management and highway construction had better prepare.

I remember while I was on a research scholarship at the National University of Singapore way back in 2006, a new line in the underground MRT (that’s what they call it there, a Mass Rail Transit) was being built at the time.

Thus, so much excavation was being carried out to build the railway 50 or even more meters down.

The most difficult areas were when the line crossed an intersection, with cars running all around while heavy equipment was right at the center of the junction box excavating.

Traffic congestion was averted because of the presence of so many public buses plying new routes to cover the deficit in road use resulting from the excavation.

This is where we will have a problem—as we are experiencing now with the construction of the Mambaling underpass—where no diversion routes, no BRT buses, not even widened roads were made to prepare for this construction.

That underpass should have been made 30, even 40 years ago when it was not needed yet.

That is what visionary planning is all about: preparing 30 years ahead so that we avoid the kind of kinks that any large infrastructure project now will encounter.

Let me end with two amazing facts, one missed, the other not.

First, I was told by old-timers that when Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corp. (ACMDC) was having problems with their local taxes way back in the 1980s, they proposed linking the eastern and western portions of the island of Cebu by building a highway tunnel from Toledo to exit somewhere in Pardo.

I wonder what life would have been for those going to and from Toledo had this been built?

Second, the oldest flyovers in Cebu–one in Tabunok, Talisay and the other in Guizo, Mandaue–were built in the early 1990s, when there was as yet not much traffic.

Someone was clearly thinking ahead of his or her time then.