Osmeña to DOTr: Give Cebu new BRT timeline

CEBU, Philippines — Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña requested the Department of Transportation to provide the city with a revised timeline and schedule of the activities for the implementation of the Cebu Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project.

In his July-31 letter to DOTr Secretary Arthur Tugade, the mayor expressed gratitude to the department for considering and allowing the BRT project to be part of the “basket of solutions” to Metro Cebu’s worsening traffic.

“We welcome this development and we wish to inform the Department that the Cebu City Government stands ready to provide full cooperation and support in whatever aspect allowed by our mandate and resources in finishing the BRT project at the soonest possible time,” read a portion of Osmeña’s letter.

The mayor mailed the letter yesterday to Tugade.

Last week, the Investment Coordination Committee-Cabinet Committee of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) has given its go signal anew of the P16.3 billion Cebu BRT project.

Also, the DOTr committed to fast track the implementation of the BRT so that the first phase of the project will be operational by June 2021.

In his letter, Osmeña listed the necessary activities needed for the resumption of the implementation of the stalled BRT project.

Some of these activities include the hiring of the Technical Support Consultancy (TSC) and social management consultancy; renewing the contracts of employees of Project Implementation Unit; reinstating the BRT budget under the 2019 budget of DOTr; pursuing land acquisition aspect of the project; downloading of funds for the greening program; evaluating of the detailed engineering design, among others.

Osmeña proposed to DOTr to immediately engage hiring of TSC since it plays critical role in finalizing the detailed engineering design of the project and other civil works.

It was earlier reported that Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia said NEDA’s committee approved the recommendation of DOTr which planned to incorporate BRT in its Integrated Inter-Modal Transport System (IITS) for Metro Cebu.

Osmeña also vowed that the city government is ready to offer its endorsement and cooperation to any of the components of IITS.

To recall, DOTr said that components of IITS are the “Cebu BRT, skytrain project, Intelligent Transportation Systems, Light Rail Transit, greenways project, among others.”

Osmeña said the city is willing to endorse the components of the IITS once their technical, financial, economic feasibility and social acceptability are substantiated and technically determined and confirmed by proper ICC-grade feasibility.

The mayor added the city is also willing to give information or any data needed to come up with the business case studies of the components of the IITS that is envisioned to address the worsening traffic problem in Metro Cebu.

In April this year, DOTr recommended for the cancellation of the BRT project citing the city’s narrow roads and other reasons.

But NEDA-ICC asked DOTr to submit more robust evidence that will support the cancellation of the BRT project.

In its inspection of the 23-kilometer BRT route, Tugade recommended to incorporate BRT in the IITS with the condition that the system will only be implemented on roads that have three lanes.

With this, Osmeña asked DOTr to reconstitute the BRT Project Implementation Unit whose employees ended their contracts last March 31 and June 30.

The mayor requested DOTr to immediately renew the contracts of these employees. — GAN (FREEMAN)