AMONG the mass transit investment options today, I would argue that the top choice is the EDSA Busway. It needs to be among the highest priorities of the government. As a mass transit investment, the busway offers a very high economic return (exceeding that of any railway project), it will deliver a significant improvement in people's lives and mobility, and it will be operational well before the end of the Marcos administration. It will dramatically transform Metro Manila's mobility environment.
EDSA is the country's most important transportation corridor. It deserves to have more than one high-capacity, high-quality mass transit service, providing valuable redundancy in case the MRT3 falters. Expanding public transportation capacity on EDSA is also key to delivering a better quality of life for millions of Filipinos who live and work in the Greater Manila area. In terms of increasing mass transit services on EDSA, the EDSA Busway is the "lowest-hanging fruit."
The busway already moves close to 400,000 persons per day with relative comfort and efficiency, matching the current ridership of MRT3 trains along the same corridor. This was achieved with hardly any investment, using existing city buses that have doors on the wrong side and stations with makeshift shelters offering very poor weather protection and difficult access for persons with disabilities.
There is great potential for transforming the EDSA Busway into a high-capacity, high-quality, universally-accessible mass transit system with relatively small investment and in a relatively short period of time. Several technical studies have shown that its daily capacity can be raised to close to two million passengers with far less investment than what would be required for a railway. An ADB-financed study in 2015 (prepared by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, one of the global experts in bus rapid transit) estimated that an investment of about P38 billion (excluding financing of new buses) would be sufficient to deliver a gold standard bus rapid transit system rivaling the best in the world.
Skeptics have argued that EDSA mass transit should be reserved exclusively for rail. In my humble opinion, having two modes on the same corridor offers commuters the best service. Both bus and rail on the same corridor is what you find in cities like London and Seoul. It is wrong to assume that the huge travel demand on EDSA can be served entirely by MRT3. EDSA contains so many important destinations and places of interest all throughout its length — with more sprouting every month.
Just consider that EDSA connects all the major places of work and commerce in Metro Manila — the complexes along Manila Bay, the Mall of Asia business district, Bonifacio Global City (BGC), Makati Commercial Center, Ortigas Center, Cubao-Araneta Center, and the booming Centris-Trinoma-North EDSA District. In a few years, MRT7 will start operations, unloading many hundreds of thousands of additional passengers on EDSA.
Many forget that there is a lot of suppressed or latent travel demand in Metro Manila. Filipinos limit the number of trips they make simply because public transport is inadequate, difficult and stressful. However, if public transport were to become more comfortable, convenient and reliable, Filipinos would travel more frequently by public transport, especially on a major corridor like EDSA.
To date, the improvements to the EDSA Busway have been largely paltry and piecemeal, limited by small annual budget allocations. Poor accessibility remains a major defect, with passengers having to walk long distances and traverse many stairways to get to the bus platforms at ground level (persons with disability are, in effect, excluded from using the busway). In the absence of sustained technical support and adequate funding, the failed design of the pedestrian ramp at the new Philam Station is the most recent example of the wasteful neglect and unrealized potential of the corridor.
Many of the current inefficiencies are obvious and are easily remedied. At almost all stations, the usable platform length is short, allowing only two buses to load and unload passengers simultaneously. There is also very poor weather protection at stations, with passengers often exposed directly to sunlight and any unfavorable weather. Boarding and alighting is slow because buses have doors on the wrong side and passengers have to walk in front of buses to get to and from the platform. The good news is that there are ready and affordable solutions to these technical and operational deficiencies.
Another positive development is that all the bus operators on the busway are already organized into two large groups that operate in a coordinated manner. This means that the transition to a high-performance service contract business model will be relatively simple. Under this model (the same approach applied in London and Singapore's successful bus operations) bus operators will be contracted to deliver services for a set fee per kilometer. Bus services are then monitored for compliance with service standards and incentives are applied to motivate operators to deliver high-quality services.
Imagine the huge economic impact and morale boost of having 1,500-1,800 new BRT buses, mostly electric, serving over 2 million passengers daily in Metro Manila with high efficiency. BRT stations will have all-weather protection, station-based fare collection and platform level-boarding with automatic platform screen doors. Both vehicles and stations will be fully accessible for persons with disabilities.
Buses will be able to operate inside and outside of EDSA dedicated lanes so that a passenger can board a BRT bus in Biñan, Laguna or in Valenzuela City and travel to BGC, Ortigas Center or the Makati Central Business District without having to transfer to another bus or rail line. This is the kind of convenience and service that will make a huge difference in the lives of Metro Manila commuters. What are we waiting for?
Robert Y. Siy is a development economist, city and regional planner, and public transport advocate. He is a co-convenor of the Move As One Coalition. He can be reached at mobilitymatters.ph@yahoo.com or followed on Twitter at @RobertRsiy.
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