The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) said more infrastructure and trains would help to resolve the traffic problem on EDSA.
In a report by The STAR, DPWH Secretary Mark Villar said the Duterte administration seeks to reduce the volume of vehicle along Metro Manila’s busiest thoroughfare to between 200,000 and 250,000 vehicles a day from the current 380,000 to 400,000 per day.
Villar said the agency has been executing President Duterte’s plan to decongest EDSA for the past two or three years.
He said critics do not realize that “any kind of solution” to EDSA’s traffic woes will take years.
The secretary said Duterte first ordered them to determine the volume of vehicles traversing along the stretch of EDSA every day.
Villar explained that since widening EDSA is impossible, the “next best thing” was to bypass the metro’s main road with the Skyway Extension project and the connector road that would link South Luzon and North Luzon Expressways.
According to Villar, the Skyway Extension will subtract some 20,000 cars from EDSA while the connector road will remove another 50,000 vehicles.
Meanwhile, Villar also said that around 20,000 to 30,000 vehicles would diverted from EDSA after the construction and rehabilitation of the Sta. Monica-Lawton and Estrella-Pantaleon bridges as well as the C-6 Road.
Villar said railways are being constructed and trains are being added to existing railways “because in the long term, the ultimate solution to traffic is mass transit.”- Jose Rodel Clapano