City Engineer Addresses Road Problem

Road quality is one of the main concerns of the city’s engineering department and is among the challenges of urban development.

The Department of Engineering and Public Works (DEPW) has observed road pavement problems as one of the challenges that they usually encounter.

Aside from roads, sidewalks are also monitored by City engineers. Most roads in the city are found to have inadequate or no sidewalks at all, with open canals along the road, which is a major hazard to pedestrians. From time to time, one-side vending in all sidewalks is strongly implemented to lessen road obstruction.

To ensure road safety and comfort, DEPW continues its maintenance works such as road patching, to be done either by its administration or by contract.  To increase connectivity from farm-to-market roads, road-concreting with drainage system is still ongoing in the mountain barangays with slope-protection measures.

For the year 2013-2016, DEPW targets a total of 51.6 meters of road to be concreted with an estimated cost of P585.8 million, while a total of 104.9 meters of road to be asphalted worth P231.9 million in the urban barangay main roads.

Another 333.3 meters of mountain barangay road is up for concreting that will connect to the main road. The proposed project is pegged at P742.6 million.

City engineer Kenneth Enriquez said that concreting roads are better compared to asphalting as concreted road pavements lasts longer and is low in maintenance. In the mountain barangays, DEPW is also opening new roads following Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama’s plan to connect the city to provincial roads. (Gessa Gunhuran, PIO Staff)