Good evening dearest alumni, residents, and fellow novices. I am Karl Francis R.

Estavilla and I am against the Bus Rapid Transit System implementation in Cebu.

There is no denying that traffic is a significant problem in Cebu and I am not against
any kind of innovation that might help the traffic congestion in the city. My stand
against BRT is not because I’m against this kind of innovation but merely because of
the readiness of this city.

Again, I am against BRT for these reasons.

1.) The readiness of this city for this kind of transportation system.

a.) Incapable Roads

The BRT system of Transportation will only cause the shrinkage of the roads,
which will result into smaller spaces for cars to travel since private cars, taxis, jeeps,
and other public utility vehicles, and BRT buses will travel side by side. In this case,
the road that will be heavily affected will be the road from Ayala-Talamban, which
will be heavily affected by the mixed traffic the buses will cause. And as we all know,
Talamban is already popular because of its traffic.

The implementation of the system would not be a guarantee that the owners
of the private vehicles will refrain from using their vehicles. This is because the BRT
has only one route and some would still prefer a direct route to their destination
than riding multiple vehicles until they reach their preferred landing place.

It must also be noted that private vehicles (cars or motorcycles) are now
cheaper in the market, which attracts more citizens in buying such vehicles.

b.) Flooding problems

It must be duly noted that the flood problems in the city still remains. Just
recently, parts of Basak, Mambaling, and N. Bacalso Ave., which are part of the route
of the BRT system, were easily flooded by a heavy rain. That means the effectivity
and efficiency of BRT will be affected if there will be occurrence of flooding in the
city, which frequently happens.

2.) The readiness of the people for this kind of transportation.

a.) Discipline

According to my research, the Cebu BRT will have a dedicated lane for the
buses, but these lanes are not divided by railings or barriers. This kind of BRT is the
same with the BRT of Delhi and Hanoi, which failed badly. Private cars and motor
vehicles, due to traffic, used the lanes of the buses as a shortcut; thus, it destroys the
purpose of such lane and contributes to possible accidents.
b.) Safety

You might think that this system is more safer than jeepneys, but according
to my research, a paper written about the TransMilenio in Bogota, which was a
model BRT system, the concentration of people from high-class to low-class inside
one mass transit system paves way for pick-pockets to easily do their task in
stealing. This was called the “perpetual plague of public transport’.

The pedestrian safety is also a problem. Another cause of the failure of the
BRT in Delhi is because of the pedestrian safety of the people, wherein people
jaywalks into the stations/terminals and does not mind the pedestrian lane
provided.

c.) Income of the public utility vehicle drivers

POSSIBLE QUESTIONS

“So are you saying that you are against the development of the city? Since this kind of
project will surely boost our economy.”

No. I am not anti-development; I am just simply stating that we are not ready for this
kind of development.

Development is a step-by-step process, thus, there should be no shortcuts taken

towards it. That is why if we would want to solve traffic, the government should first
focus on the basic problems like the narrow and faulty roads and the flooding
problems of the city.

We should start solving the basic problems first before we go to a bigger kind of
development. Through this, there will be a great foundation of the development of
the city, and there will be less chances of it failing.

Convenience and Comfortability

Now if we put this BRT into the comfortability perspective, then we are all aware
right that there are this app based transpo in the likes of Grab and Uber?

Alternative:

Encourage or engage with private bus operators to change their mode of operation,
start consolidating, apply the bus model configuration use in BRT, change their
current concept of operation as to that of BRT; service oriented. It will use the
existing roads and just changing and educating the mind of these private operators
to adapt the concept of BRT within PHL existing road. That way, they can
immediately switch their operation to a “modified BRT”. I think it is more in shifting
the mind set of how can a bus or jeepney as public transport (PHL setting) can be
operated base on customer needs and satisfactions.