Commuters to and from the south don't forget the ordeal they went through from the time the underpass project began in 2017 and was completed and opened to traffic two years later, on June 15, 2019.Įxpectations were high: the less-than-a-kilometer-long underpass was to allow commuters to skip the busy Mambaling-Labangon intersection and, with its gargantuan cistern, was to save residents of the two barangays from flood water.Ī letdown in both purposes. Last Holy Wednesday, March 31, huge jams because of the flooding at the underpass eased only towards noon, long enough to revive people's outrage over the project. Councilor Jerry Guardo, chairman of the Sanggunian committee on infrastructure, said then that the move would finally address the drainage problem. Last October 18, 2020, the City Council authorized DPWH to start the work on the widening of side streets along the underpass. But then, that apparently is taking time, perhaps because of road right-of-way problems they couldn't speed up the process of expropriating the land needed.

After that was struck out, the next plan was to add service roads on both sides of Natalio Bacalso, with drainage systems for large volume of water.

The long-lasting solution would've been the KL system: that cistern, even if not the size of 10 Olympic-size swimming pools. Local DPWH technical people, prodded by the Sanggunian, had long ascertained the cause and what to do about it. The cry for help might yet push DPWH to end the recurring drainage crisis.īut the 'imported' experts are not likely to find anything more than the agency's regional technicians had long discovered. It was supposed to be a 'smart tunnel' aped from the Kuala Lumpur system, which was to be the pilot for similar drainage projects in Cebu. Representative Rodrigo 'Bebot' Abellanosa of Cebu City south, who secured the money for the project in the House, seized and waved an alleged DPWH promise that a cistern 'the size of 10 Olympic swimming pools' would cope with the drainage problem. (P638 million was the initially reported cost the P800 million that Caindec cited could be the total upon completion.) A cistern that was to be built below the underpass, which could hold runoff water from two barangays, was absent from the completed underpass. In the City Council session of October 14, following the Sunday when the Mambaling underpass overflew with spillover water from the streets and the mountains, a DPWH official told the Sanggunian that the P638-million project was wrongly constructed, as it had no drainage system. Llamas St., Cebu City like a Venice waterway with boats sailing on it? This year, a heavy flooding last Holy Wednesday prompted Land Transportation regional chief Victor Caindec to call it an 'P800-million canal.'

Remember that day in October 2020 when Facebook memes depicted the junction of Natalio Bacalso Ave.

Underpass sign