Cebu can’t wait, we need mass transport now

Something during the holiday season spooked me. It was not the noticeable worsening of traffic congestion, though that was expected during the holiday rush for shopping and the usual year end errands. In fact, traffic eased during the break itself, when schools were out and most workplaces and government offices observed the no-work holidays.

What disturbed me was the transport congestion in the basement and upper level parking areas of our shopping malls. It makes you realize there are simply too many private cars in Cebu now, and the situation is getting worse. Cebu’s crowded parking spaces are a sad manifestation of our car-centric society and of our lack of decent mass transportation for commuters.

Data show that car sales in the country are still climbing, growing by a brisk 8.7% in 2024. Where do you think these new cars go? Onto the same already-congested roads we crawl through every day. Yet the lack of urgency in developing and implementing a decent mass transport system – the bus rapid transit (BRT) in the case of Cebu City – is a stubborn manifestation of our car-centric culture.

Maybe a year or two from now, there will be no point in owning and driving a car anymore. We will be spending half our lives crawling on the road, either in our air-conditioned cabins that take up a disproportionate amount of road space compared with minibuses (modern jeepneys) packed to the brim with passengers and driven by undisciplined drivers, competing for every inch of road space with motorcycles and poorly-maintained taxis that pollute the air.

Whenever I head down to a mall parking basement in the city, I am sadly reminded of Singapore or Taipei, where I’ve been a couple of times. There, you descend from the mall to the subway in air-conditioned comfort, or you catch a bus on schedule at designated, conveniently-located stops designed with commuters’ comfort in mind. Here, you descend into the heat and humidity of the mall’s basement until you reach your car and, worse, you get stuck in a line of vehicles also trying to exit the basement. This is the pitiful normal we have learned to tolerate.

Studies have concluded that the only real solution to traffic congestion is not to build more roads or flyovers, but to reduce the number of private vehicles on the road and build a decent, reliable mass transportation system. Yet Cebu’s most feasible mass transport option, the BRT, which can bring more people to their destinations on schedule, is met with consternation among car owners and indifference from the general public. Or so it seems to me.

According to reports, the World Bank has rated the Cebu BRT project’s implementation as unsatisfactory and assigned it a high-risk rating, signaling serious doubt that the entire system will be completed by its September 2026 deadline. The inauguration of Phase 1 has been moved many times, and it is still unclear whether the ceremony will be held before or after Sinulog 2026.

It is also quite surprising, and another manifestation of our car-centric culture, that Cebu’s airport is not connected to a reliable mass transport system, particularly city buses. Our airport terminals may be the best in the country, yet once you step outside and fall in line for public transport, you compete with everyone else for a few aging, smelly taxis and pricey TNVS vehicles. Or, if you are lucky, you get picked up by a private car, which only adds to the congestion and inefficiency on the road.

No one is doing the math on vehicle growth, or, if control is off the table, on how to expand road capacity and manage traffic so roads keep moving. There is no coherent plan, no timetable, and no visible implementation that treats Metro Cebu’s road space as finite. What we have instead are reactive, hodgepodge measures, varying from one LGU to another.

This is a challenge to our national agencies and, above all, to our local leaders. Last year’s elections brought new leaders to Cebu City and the Province of Cebu, and that should mean something. Cebu needs to recapture its lost energy, creativity, and boldness in governance. These qualities have weakened over years of complacency and self-deception, as branding and self-promotion replaced the harder work of reform. Meanwhile, cities like Iloilo have quietly improved the quality of life of their residents.