Wish list comes true
BLast part igger things are in store for Filipino road users, like the NLEx harbor link, the harbor link extension straight into the piers, and the NLEx- SLEx metro link connector to Skyway stage 3 PUP interchange, among others. In the north, NLEx Santa Ines interchange will get a major reconfiguration, and so will the SCTEx-NLEx Balem interchange. The SCTEx Mabiga interchange will be converted to full access exit/entry and the U-turn slot in the median will be removed. SFEx will also undergo lane expansion, negating the need for SBMA to build a 25-kilometer bypass highway from the ports to Tipo. With or without emergency powers, DPWH Secretary Mar A. Villar is now challenged to speed up all road right-ofway purchases for up-and-running projects, especially for PUP SkywayStage 3, the metro link connector, and the C-5 extensions.
In Metro Manila, the MMDA, now under the iACT traffic super body, has reconfigured the arrangements of the abundant Jersey barriers and bollards, which were bounty from the 2015 APEC Summit. Today’s MMDA has revalidated the traffic-easing priorities of the former head of MMDA, Bayani F. Fernando.
First to go were the wholesale bollard blockades of merging lanes that did reduce traffic travel times on EDSA, but which came at the great cost of doubling or tripling transit times through the main avenues that cross EDSA.
Case in point: The ill- advised bollard blockade from EDSA-Annapolis to EDSA- Ortigas, which exacted constant near-standstill traffic all day on Ortigas Avenue. By November 2016, the new MMDA chief, Thomas M. Orbos, ordered the bollard blockade lifted, and commute times normalized.
Another instance where the new MMDA management was able to resolve a major traffic issue was in EDSA Cubao. In the “bad” old days, the Christmas season and school openings caused traffic along this stretch to stand still, its tail end reaching as far north as 680 Home Appliances during the peak of morning rush hours. By October 2016, the traffic here began to stop more than three kilometers farther. But within the first day of the MMDA’s redeployment of its own traffic enforcers and a re-jig of provincial bus entry times, the traffic standstill reverted to the old pattern.
We always thought that PNP-HPG officers were overqualified to be mere on-street traffic enforcers, and neither was traffic planning heavily emphasized in their criminologyled curriculum. Now, the bulk of the PNP-HPG have been reassigned to keep the Mabuhay Lanes clear as MMDA traffic planners have revised some rerouting plans that were instituted in late 2015, but were previously proven to be ineffective in relieving traffic.
Without getting into extra-legal means and shortcuts, the iACT, even without emergency powers, has put some order on the maintenance and operations of Metro Manila’s main light transit rail lines, the LTO’s long-stranded electronic data processing, the rehash of the driver’s license plastic card supply contract, and the rebid of the new license plate’s major redistribution.
The strong and decisive economic triumvirate of DoF Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez, DBM Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno and NEDA Director- General Ernesto M. Pernia is well-equipped to lead this renewed infrastructure guide. Curiously and in contrast to the previous administration, the trio prefers to lean less on PPP, and even canceled the program’s ridiculously expensive “premium” in order to have major infrastructure projects built by the government, though offered for bidding to private construction companies. Now, only when finished can long-term contracts for operations and maintenance are allowed for bidding to the private sector, similar to what FVR did to the STAR tollway.
The DU30 election campaign promise was about “change is coming.” And it has been a dizzying pace of change for the first six months of the “mayor’s” administration.