Trams for mass transit system for Metro Cebu

I cannot and will not forget what Cebu City Tomas Osmeña told the media why he is not joining the Metro Cebu Development Coordinating Board or Mega Cebu. He said it is because the people there are not "elected" and therefore, they have no authority or even any God-given right to find solutions to whatever ails our beloved Cebu.

Unfortunately due to a very heavy schedule, I could not join the presentation by Dr. Danilo Jaque,managing director of HydroNet Consultants on their initial findings on the flooding situation in Cebu. I'm sure that this is a very interesting presentation and it is time to take the bull by its horns to work together with our elected officials and volunteers in order to solve our problems.

But since I cannot yet talk about the studies on our flooding, which we already know is caused by illegal settlers who built their homes and shanties along our riverbanks, our "elected" officials failed miserably to contain and prevent it. It is because these people are their voters. Cebu's growth has been stymied because of these selfish and greedy public servants that we voted into office.

Recently during the State of the Nation Address of President Rodrigo "Digong" Duterte, he mentioned one of the solutions to the traffic problems not only in Metro Manila, but also in Davao, Iloilo, and Cebu and he proposes to build a Light Rail Transit as these are people movers that can move hundreds of thousands of commuters quickly from place to place. You can see that this is done in the great metropolis of Singapore, Hong Kong and in many cities in Japan. So why shouldn't we also get one?

I guess this study is now on the table of a person whom we know that a few months back. He didn't even think that he'd be in this enviable position. I'm referring to my good friend, Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Dino who revealed that a team of transportation experts is already studying a proposed LRT for Metro Cebu. But before we move forward, let's first look back in time when Cebu had its railway system that brought our forefathers from Carcar to Danao City. Unfortunately, the Cebu Railway was bombednot by the Japanese Imperial Army, but by the Americans that were fighting our Japanese occupiers.

So when people ask mewhy wasn't the Cebu Railway rebuilt, I can only tell you what my late father, Atty. Jesus S. Avila once told me that after the war when Cebu was devastated and the railways destroyed, the Americans left many jeeps and trucks as they left Cebu to occupy Tokyo. Those jeeps later became the venerable jeepneys, which is our main mass transport system even today 71years after the end of World War II. For longer trips to the North or South, many or our leaders bought six-by-six (6x6) military trucks and transformed them into buses and soon, they became the backbone of our bus transportation industry.

When attempts to restore the railway system were proposed, you could guess who were the people who blocked these moves. The final ignominious end to Cebu's railway came just 20-years ago when one family practically bought all the railway properties from Carcar to Danao for their own personal use. This family is now very rich because of that deal. So now that the possibility of a railway is again on the table, we have to find ways to secure land where the railroad would pass and if this happens, believe me, Cebu will progress immensely!

With the railway or the LRT now being seriously proposed, people want to know whatever happened to the Bus Rapid Transit? Well let me say it here that the person tasked to spearhead the BRT project was Mr. Paul Villarete. But somehow he had other plans and he wanted to become the general manager of the Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority and when that happened, no one was knowledgeable to present the BRT to the National Economic Development Authority, which had a presentation on the BRT with former president Benigno "PNoy" Aquino III in attendance. But when PNoy asked certain questions, the person giving the presentation could not give a credible reply and in the end, the BRT wasn't given any priority under the Aquino regime.

With the MyBus buses already plying the SM City to Mactan Airport route, I would like to believe that the BRT is fast-becoming irrelevant. Meanwhile, I suggest that Michael Dino and his transport team do a study of the tram system that they have in the City of Hiroshima and in Jerusalem. Hiroshima was wiped out by the atomic bomb and when they rebuilt the city, they chose a tram system. I also saw the tram in the ancient city of Jerusalem a city that existed since the time of our Lord Jesus Christ. May I then suggest that we studied the trams of Hiroshima and cities in Germany and the one in Jerusalem because this can be done quickly by laying the rails on the road.