Solving Metro Cebu’s traffic congestion isn’t as simple as improving infrastructure networks and mass transport though they are helpful in the medium term.
The long-term solution which urban developers and local officials may have overlooked or had known for sometime but were too busy or too uncertain to pursue remains relocating and re-distributing the population to other parts of the province.
This is what economists refer to as establishing growth centers and there are local governments in Cebu that are moving towards that direction: Cordova town is set to pursue a reclamation project that is supposed to make way for a hotel and an entertainment complex at the cost of displacing fisherfolk and damaging the coastal ecosystem.
Consolacion town is also pursuing a port project that drew the interest of foreign investors much to the chagrin of Cebu Port Authority officials who felt bypassed by this development.
The point is, these major projects will hopefully draw a lot of residents based in Metro Cebu to seek employment in these potential growth centers, thereby helping decongest the cities of Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu.
It will also help stop to a certain degree the movement of people from within Cebu province to these cities since they know that they can secure gainful employment at their hometown or city.
That still doesn’t address the problem of those who seek greener pastures in Metro Cebu only to end up as settlers/squatters who live under bridges and near creeks, aggravating a city’s garbage and flooding problems by dumping their garbage straight to the rivers and onto the streets.
That said, a modernized mass transport system can aid in decongesting the population in Metro Cebu by enabling employees who live in the province to go straight to their homes from their workplaces in the city instead of having to rent a room or apartment in some broken down lodging house.
As far as infrastructure is concerned, i.e. road widening, flyovers, bridges, underpasses and so on, governments can only build so much of these without drastically affecting the natural landscape.
What was an adequate road and bridge network a decade or two decades ago is insufficient now because of a larger, more diverse population whose numbers could serve to boost the political stock of any self-respecting elective public official.
Again, the obvious long-term solution is to redistribute the population to growth centers in the country that can accommodate them better and allow them to build comfortable lives.
That would have been a priority for the administration if it wasn’t so obsessed over its drug war.