A Philippine Daily Inquirer report about the 153 out of 159 projects worth P46.6 billion that the Department of Transportation (DOTR) failed to implement made mention of the Cebu Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) that was supposed to take off last year.
The BRT was included belatedly by the DOTR as one of many in their so-called “basket of solutions” for mass transport in Metro Cebu after a meeting with World Bank officials who still stood by its viability despite the insistence of some with an axe to grind against the incumbent Cebu City Hall top occupant that it won’t work.
After making the pronouncement that the BRT will be limited to those roads with at least three lanes, the powers that be which included the DOTR clarified that a point-to-point bus system will also be employed to serve Cebu City residents and probably some Metro Cebu areas.
Unless the DOTR explains it in detail, we hate to point out that the P2P bus system sounds like a copycat project of the BRT that was mentioned in the last minute by a press statement from the Office of the Presidential Assistant to the Visayas.
The COA blamed “policy directions by political leaders and economic managers” for the failure and delayed implementation of the projects and called on the DOTR to “improve the utilization of its allotment and cash allocations through timely implementation of programs and projects.”
The BRT had been delayed for more than a year no thanks to the OPAV whose insistence to cancel it and replace it with a Light Railway Transit (LRT) project for Cebu City would have set back funding from either the World Bank or any other financial institution for other mass transport projects for years—a probability that even the proudest elected government officials would be hard pressed to ignore.
That the project had been delayed on the say-so of a transport expert who is credited as one of the architects of the largely expensive and dismally performing LRT system in Manila casts doubts on any claims of expertise they may make in addressing Metro Cebu’s traffic congestion.
Now that the BRT had been at least from the OPAV level recognized as a viable, even if temporary solution to Metro Cebu’s transport and traffic woes, what’s holding up its implementation?
We hope the DOTR comes out with the guidelines and whatever requirements are needed to speed up the BRT’s implementation lest it be accused of kowtowing to the interests of an influential few who have zero accountability to the Filipino riding public.
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