DOTr’s proposed subway project/Sugbo News photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Department of Transportation (DOTr) has recently proposed to Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia a 67.5-km subway or underground passenger railway line that will connect Carcar City (southern Cebu) to Danao City (northern Cebu).
The DOTr officials met the governor last February 29 at the Capitol to present the summary of the project’s plans, according to Sugbo News, the Capitol’s official news portal.
The project will be called Metro Cebu Urban Mass Rapid Transit (UMRT), said DOTr Undersecretary for Planning and Project Development, Timothy John Batan.
Metro Cebu UMRT aims to address “Metro Cebu’s growing transportation woes as it seeks to decongest traffic, reduce travel time, and improve connectivity through Cebu’s first underground railway system.”
‘Do it local’
Furthermore, Garcia has proposed the DOTr to allow the local government units (LGUs) to help in handling the project while the DOTr will continue their “supervisory control.”
The governor also noted that the said project would take “decades from proposal, to feasibility studies, to processing of permits, and securing approval from various national line agencies, to execution, until completion.”
“The way you are telling me now, that is the same old pattern that I am saying, magagawa ito 20 years from now. So, if we’re going to follow that same old pattern, wala pa ring mangyayari,” Garcia told DOTr.
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“We’d like to break that pattern…we will…together with the local government po,” Batan responded.
Upon hearing Batan’s words, Garcia said she is “challenging” him to which Batan has accepted.
“Hindi together with the local [government]. Do everything local but with DOTr’s supervision,” the governor told Batan.
PPP model
Meanwhile, Sugbo News reported that the proposed project would also open to private companies for public-private partnership (PPP) through the Provincial Government’s Economic Enterprise Council (EEC), subject to the rules and regulations set by law.
“We are excited about the possibility of another first potentially, well we have our first subway in Metro Manila, but potentially a first subway that will be entirely financed by the local government through various funding strategies and without requiring national government funding,” Batan told Cebu media.
Sugbo News further noted that PPP is not new to Cebu with the first PPP in international airport operations at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA), and the first private company-led toll road project at the Cebu-Cordova Link Expressway (CCLEX) in partnership with LGUs.
Meanwhile, in Cebu City, Councilor Rey Gealon crafted a resolution in January this year that eyes to implement a subway project that will traverse Barangay Bulacao in the south to Talamban in north as a means to ease vehicular traffic here.
Gealon hoped that the DOTr would also find the need to have a subway in Cebu City.
In the past, the Philippine Railway Company (PRC) used to operate a railway system in Cebu between 1907 and up to the outbreak of World War II. It connected Argao in the south and Danao in the north. /clorenciana