Let's focus on the brt

We acknowledge the existence of a worsening traffic problem of our city at certain hours of the day. For instance, one early evening about a month ago, we entered Archbishop Reyes Avenue at its Gorordo Avenue corner, as we came from our downtown law office. Our destination was the IT Park, less than a kilometer away.  To my horror, we covered the distance in almost an hour that I promised not to pass thru the route again.

Well, I really thought that we were just caught by an unusually heavy traffic volume that day. What played in my mind was the scene of years in the past. In a regular session of the city council (where I was a member of), a discussion focused on the visible indications of a then emerging city traffic quagmire. I remember a fellow councilor, Dra. Pureza Onate, claiming that Cebu City is a 15-minute city. She meant that we could cover the city, by car and in leisurely cruise, from one end to the other in just a quarter of an hour. She was worried though, during that session, that, as things were developing, we might have woes in our traffic in unimaginable proportions. We rallied around her stand to put in place lasting solutions.

A little more than two decades ago, the city council passed a Revised Road Ordinance. If my aging memory still recalls, the three main thrusts of the said ordinance were: (a) to widen narrow roads; (b) to straighten crooked streets and (c) to open new avenues and highways. We reasoned out then that with that piece of local legislation, we could retain the benchmark of our city being a "15-minute city."

Our Archbishop Reyes Avenue to IT Park trip a month past, made true the dire forecast of Dra. Onate. In other words, government has not addressed the problem with effective cure.

Our consolation is that many cities throughout the world are also experiencing traffic jams of their own. Some of them have bigger headaches than we can ever comprehend. In fact, in Metro Manila, we witness daily how inefficient road network is costing the nation's economy enough for a Japanese research group to claim that billions of pesos are wasted.

The national government, thanks to the efforts of the honorable Congressman Raul V. del Mar, spent millions of pesos in the construction of infra-structure projects called "fly-over." I noted though that these expenditures were spread in different periods approaching elections. Why should the government implement costly projects few months before elections never ceased to startle me. Call it biased opinion but, I insist that because such projects did not consider the perspectives outlined in the Revised Road Ordinance of the city, they did not achieve the purpose of anticipating humongous traffic grid locks.

Quite recently too, the honorable lawmaker from the north district of our city announced his filing a bill aimed at placing underground a network of roads and rail ostensibly in order to solve our current woes.  While it is rather a late idea, it is still a great one and we should thank him for that. There is no denying that the future of an efficient transport system lies underground.

But, my goodness, it must necessitate a disproportionately huge outlay than what the problem presently calls for. The kind of undertaking is too costly for now. Such argument that the project is going to be shouldered by the national government will not distract us from the practical and realistic thinking of putting whatever available resource to the problem at hand.

The traffic problem of the city is current. Its solution cannot be postponed to a later era. It is good to know that recently a bus-rapid-transit project, for and in the city, has finally seen concrete signs of implementation. A foreign loan was reported to have been signed and so the execution period is soon at hand.  I suppose that on its route, some narrow roads will have to be widened while those crooked streets stand to be straightened. Of course, there will be new avenues to be opened. So, between this BRT and the concept of a subterranean transport system, our leaders need to focus on the former. I am afraid that the congressman's push for his newly found baby might instead become a tool for people who oppose the BRT to oppose this project.