A 20% Cebu City traffic improvement

Social media has been showing pictures of Cebu City with its tall buildings, new bridges, malls, hotels, and some nice roadways. It conveys the city’s progress and shows it as a nice place to visit and live without hinting on the traffic that comes with these developments. We have just elected a new set of city officials who are promising to improve the city’s environment and services to the people, this might be the right time to contribute rehashed and new ideas to make the city a more livable/likable city.

As private citizens, we can make suggestions and cooperate with the government as we do not have the resources and power to implement programs/projects. I had worked part-time in government as director of MCWD, the city water company and in CITOM, the city traffic authority with mixed and contrasting results. In our time, we were able to improve the services and finances of MCWD because we had the mandate and resources to implement programs and projects. In CITOM, we functioned mostly as an advisory/recommendatory entity and had to depend on the city departments to implement programs and projects. For this column we will suggest to the city government, four short gestation/low-cost programs/projects that can improve the city traffic flow by 20%, while awaiting the impact of the BRT.

The first recommendation is to have a designated “Loading/Unloading Area” for all private/public vehicles. Disruptions in traffic flow are partly caused by vehicles loading/unloading in any portion of the road which stops traffic flow. For major roads, there should be a “recessed” dedicated area every two kilometers that can accommodate four vehicles, which are the loading/unloading bays for all vehicles. As these are indented by three meters, these will not impede the flow of vehicles. Proof of concept of this is the indented area in front of UC Banilad where PUVs load and unload. Vehicles may still load /unload in the private driveways of buildings which are already recessed.

Second recommendation is to "flare” all the intersections of major roads like Banilad, M.J. Cuenco, Archbishop Reyes, etc. This will make right turns faster and easier and maximize road capacity. Proof of concept are the Cebu Business Park roads and some city streets with already flared intersections.

Third recommendation is for the city DPS and DPWH to fix the road/street potholes and ruts in the city within 24 hours of discovery. Roads/streets with potholes/ruts actually reduce vehicle speed by 50%, as drivers reduce speed to avoid the potholes for comfort and to minimize vehicle damage. Vehicle speed in bad roads go as low as 5 kph from the usual 10 kph to 15 kph in city roads.

Fourth recommendation is to fix all existing sidewalks and make more sidewalks. The lack or the bad state of our sidewalks, make pedestrians walk in the edges of the roads which forces vehicles to move slower to avoid accidents. This makes traffic flow slower than in roads with properly paved sidewalks. You can see pedestrians including foreign tourists twisting while walking in the edges of our roads/streets.

I have been driving every day in Cebu City for 50 years and my average city speed has dropped from 22 kph to 11 kph in the last 16 years. By implementing all these recommendations, it is expected that traffic flow will improve by 20%, average speed to 14 kph, with 20% savings in fuel consumption and 20% more productive work activity.

The capital expenditures for these projects/programs are not huge and more than half of them are already in the annual budget of the city. This just needs proper implementation and political will.