The countdown for CCTO

Of all the departments and offices of the Cebu City Government, none is more directly involved with ensuring the future mobility within the city than the Cebu City Transportation Office (CCTO). The City Planning and Development Office (CPDO) is, too, but it’s on a broader and far-reaching perspective. People and goods move within and through the city daily, and both are constantly increasing albeit at a pace that won’t be noticeable in our daily lives. Countries and cities grow even as each of us, as well as entire populations, do. “Traffic” certainly does, too.

There are a few nuances we must realize in assessing and addressing the future scenario of mobility for Metro Cebu. One, Metro Cebu is a unicentric metropolis and might be for some time. This is in contrast with Metro Manila, which is made up of various “central” areas, with the other sub-centers scattered all over, connected by multiple corridors. Metro Cebu’s urban centers are more or less, in a linear formation, with one central corridor since the 1980’s, a new coastal corridor added recently and a “hillside bypass”, all parallel to each other. This results in a unique configuration more challenging than that of Manila.

Can CCTO ensure that our mobility would remain viable in the future? We can only trust it would. The other three cities (Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu, and Talisay) would have to face the same challenge of course, and cooperation is crucial, but the bulk of the burden still rests on Cebu City, due to its centrality and density. It would take another two decades, at least, to diminish the central dominance of Cebu City, owing to its huge land area, which only a fraction of which has been urbanized. And we don’t have a strong mechanism (like MMDA) to do a metropolitan level of “balancing” development. Cebu City will continue to grow faster than the others and this will creep inwards.

Which will be CCTO’s foremost challenge. Fortunately, it has not evolved unprepared --what was formerly CITOM is now “the best traffic management office in the Philippines with qualified personnel and efficient logistical support", according to Cebu City’s website. No, I don’t consider it boastful because I totally believe it’s true, though, adding “probably” or “is considered” before the phrase, maybe a finer way of saying it. Unfortunately, it does not have time to gloss on those laurels --the threat of urban congestion, not only for Cebu City but for the entire Metro Cebu is real and imminent-- traffic management and improvement needs to be continuous and timely