300,000 vehicles need to be removed from EDSA to ease traffic – Villar

Some 300,000 vehicles would have to be removed from EDSA to fulfill President Rodrigo Duterte's promise to alleviate traffic along the country's busiest highway, a top infrastructure official said Monday.

"When you talk about Metro Manila, you don't have to look further than EDSA as the symbol of congestion. When he ran for the presidency, ang pangako ni Presidente ay tatapusin niya ang traffic sa EDSA," said Public Works and Highways Secretary Mark Villar.

"In order for us to do that, we computed... we need to take out 250,000 to 300,000 cars from EDSA daily in order to revert it back to an acceptable level of traffic."

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 2015 calculated that the traffic along EDSA cost the country P2.4 billion a day.

In February, Duterte conceded that easing traffic along EDSA was beyond him. But he backtracked in June when he committed to cut down the travel time from Cubao to Makati to five minutes by December.

Villar said that they had several projects that would provide alternative routes to EDSA.

Among the projects were the Metro Manila Skyway Project, the NLEX-SLEC Connector Road Project, and several bridge projects across the metropolis.

"When all these are finished, we would be able to bring back EDSA to its former state which is acceptable traffic," said Villar.

"Rest assured this dream of EDSA is not a dream. It’s come from a point of inevitability. We will decongest EDSA."

As for Duterte's promise of five-minutes between Makati and Cubao, Villar said this was possible given the Skyway, which would shorten travel time between Balintawak and Makati to 15 minutes. — Jon Viktor Cabuenas/DVM, GMA News