WB offers grants to improve city traffic system

CEBU, Philippines - Cebu City welcomes three new projects proposed by the World Bank that all aims at improving the traffic system in the city at no cost to the government.

WB recently offered the city three grants in the form of technical assistance – a vehicle tracking system, an emission inventory scheme and a vehicle scrapping project.

Engineer Nigel Paul Villarete, city planning and development coordinator, said that the vehicle tracking system is a new technology being introduced that will shorten data collection and database build up which in the past could be done for years.

Cebu’s last travel model update was released way back in 1992. It was never updated for almost a decade due to its prohibitive requirements in terms of cost and expertise.

“Because it will take a lot of effort, time and cost. Millions of pesos is needed in order to plan properly,” Villarete said.

The vehicle tracking system proposed by the WB team promises to provide urban transport planners and regulators with a low-cost and simple means to collect dynamic travel time and road condition data.

These data is useful for a more effectively managed road assets, mitigation of traffic congestion and managing mass transport fleets.

“Through this technology mahibaw-an asa ang congestion level, kanus-a ang congestion level, asa ang mga dalan na daghan potholes, asa ang dalan nga smooth,” he said.

“If you have this kind of system in place, you will have an online knowledge kung asa ka angay muagi. Mura’g naa kay updated traffic adviser. You will know if there is traffic or not because we will also monitor speeding vehicles,” Villarete added.

The WB proposes a one-year assistance which shall start with consultations with project entities on existing resources, bidding process, preparation of the detailed project implementation plan, data collection up to preparation and finalization of final reports.

The actual data collection will take one month once the project commences.

The team will be deploying inexpensive vehicle mobile probes in taxis, public transport, and government-owned vehicles.

There will be at least 500 participants which will be given with the mobile probes.

Probes will continue sending data from time to time which will be recorded in the system.

“By utilizing software based on the open-source Google Maps platform, traffic planners can achieve an exponentially more accurate picture of congestion and fuel efficiency,” according to the WB proposal template.

Aside from Cebu, WB is granting the same project to Weihai in China. The initial cost of the project is US$300,000. (FREEMAN)