EDSA 2

WILL the San Miguel Corporation-pro­posed elevated Efipanio De­los Santos Avenue (EDSA) finally solve the worsening vehicular traffic problem along Metro Manila’s pre­miere road?

The proposal particularly provides for the construc­tion of a 10-lane toll road on top of the current EDSA. It will basically double the current road area of EDSA.

Vehicular traffic along EDSA will certainly be bet­ter than how it currently is. However, will the additional road area be enough to have fast moving vehicular traffic in EDSA?

This project, assuming that the Duterte Adminis­tration approves it, can­not, in itself alone, solve the EDSA problem, which is essentially a function of the continuously increasing number of vehicles using the said road.

This project needs to be pursued together with other infrastructure initia­tives, many of which are already in the pipeline like the NLEX-SLEX connector and the integration of the different rail transit sys­tems.

In addition to these initia­tives, the government also needs to make drastic ac­tions to enforce discipline among motorists and pas­sengers.

The elevated EDSA will certainly make a lot of dif­ference in solving the EDSA problem. Without it, we cannot look forward to the convenience provided by additional road area.

The most interesting as­pect of the SMC proposal is the provision giving the government the right to buy back the road at any time after construction and buy the same back at cost.

While the proposed toll road appears to be a busi­ness venture for SMC, the inclusion of the buy-back provision reflects SMC’s commendable intent to contribute to putting in place a solution to the EDSA problem. The buy-back-at-cost provision of the SMC proposal shows that profit is not its funda­mental consideration.

The elevated EDSA, even if it remains to be a toll road, is still economically beneficial to motorists as faster travel will mean lesser costs in terms of gasoline expenses and travel time. The same will also be beneficial to our economy in general as it has been established in previous studies that the cost of Metro Manila traffic problem is already billions of pesos.

On the part of SMC, even if it does not earn a profit from this project (should the government decides to buy the elevated EDSA right after its completion), it will also benefit as its vehicles and employees are also among the users of the said road.

This kind of initiative is the better variant of public-private partner­ship – one where a pri­vate business organization subordinates the interests of its shareholders to the interest of the public and the country.