Public transportation in Metro Cebu (Part 5) – Who plans? National or local?

The question continues on the area of institutional responsibility for planning mass public transportation for Cebu City (or any other urban center in the Philippines for that matter). Is it the national government (DOTr and/or LTFRB)? Will it be the local government? In the case of Metro Manila, you have a third entity, the Metro Manila Development Authority or MMDA. So, who’s in charge?

In the case of Cebu Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) whose project is this? We need to revisit decision-making in history to make some sense of who’s who. While it started in Curitiba, Brazil, in the previous century, BRTs shot to global notice only in 2000 when Bogota built TransMilenio, and Indonesia followed suit with TransJakarta in 2004. In the Philippines, a Pre-Feasibility Study was done for Metro Manila in 2007 but the Manila-based national government took notice of it and placed it on storage.

The Cebu BRT was the first concrete project that was initiated, and not by the national government. In fact, repeated requests were made for assistance from Manila, which were always turned down --they preferred rail. We may call it desperation or good initiative, probably both, former Cebu City mayor Tommy Osmeña reached out directly to the World Bank for help in 2008. Surprise of all surprises, the bank responded positively. Thus, Cebu City prepared the Pre-Feasibility Study by itself sans the national government’s participation.

This should be an important lesson in the country that needs to be institutionalized: Who plans for public mass transportation? Both logic and technical analyses will point out the need for the local government to be on top of this issue. After all, the inseparability of land use and transport has long been established at the turn of the century. And land use is clearly a local concern with the local government mandated to make their Comprehensive Land Use Plan. By extension, even the recent mandate for the Land Public Transport Route Plan is for LGUs. Cebu initiated the Cebu BRT on its own in 2008. But by 2011, the national government took over the reins and made it its own, as the first of three BRT national projects --Cebu, Manila (Quezon Avenue), and EDSA. And then proceeded to make a mess out of them with the loan for Manila BRT cancelled, Cebu BRT whittled down to half, and unrecognizable from the original concept, and EDSA BRT rebranded as EDSA Carousel which does not work as a BRT should at all.

The sad thing for Cebu is that the city surrendered its rights to the project to the detriment of the Cebuanos. The “project” that is supposed to be inaugurated this month, by the president no less, is not a BRT at all, either by definitions that the whole world commonly use, or by the plans made in 2010. What’s sad is that the city government officials dance to the charade and still call it the Cebu City BRT. It’s a sad commentary to the bright dream, 15 years ago, to build the Philippines’ first BRT, in Cebu City no less. (To be continued)