AMONG the many project options to expand and improve mass transit, the ripest and lowest hanging fruit and the one with the greatest impact, in my view, is the EDSA Busway. It needs to be on top of the project investment list of the Marcos administration regardless of the mode of procurement (whether as a public sector project or as a full or hybrid public-private partnership). Here's why.
With hardly any investment, the EDSA Busway already moves about 325,000 passengers daily. While private vehicles are stuck in traffic, buses on the median dedicated lane can take a passenger from Monumento to Mall of Asia in about 45 minutes, a journey that used to take three hours when buses were on curbside lanes. The EDSA Busway, however, is far from achieving its potential in terms of passenger capacity and service quality. With well-designed stations plus the right vehicles, its capacity and functionality can be increased many times over. We know this because a comprehensive study for the EDSA Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project was undertaken in 2016 by one of the world's leading BRT design outfits, the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), funded by a grant from the Asian Development Bank. The ITDP concluded that a P38-billion BRT system using EDSA as the main corridor could move up to 2.5 million passengers daily using a combination of 12- and 18-meter buses.
Continue reading with one of these options:
Ad-free access
P 80 per month
(billed annually at P 960)
- Unlimited ad-free access to website articles
- Limited offer: Subscribe today and get digital edition access for free (accessible with up to 3 devices)