President Rodrigo Duterte should consider the proposed construction of the Integrated Pasig River Viaduct Elevated Highway and Personal Rapid System as an ultimate solution to Metro Manila’s worsening traffic congestion.
The Lilac Center for Public Interest, a policy research and advocacy organization, said the President’s directive in his 4th State of the Nation Address to undertake immediate action to ensure the speedy and smooth flow of vehicular traffic is “to reclaim all public roads being used for private ends and must be improved.”
“The President should direct the DPWH, DOTC, and NEDA to fast-track their action to the proposal of the private sector for the realization of IPRVEH-PRS, a four-lane elevated highway or viaduct, a Pneumatic-Wheeled Tranvia (PWT) and Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) traversing the Pasig and Marikina Rivers,” Lilac Center president Nikon Fameronag said Wednesday.
“Opening up the 41.6-kilometer integrated transport system—the Pasig River at 22.36 km. and Marikina River at 19.24 km.—would be the ultimate economic solution to Metro Manila’s perennial traffic woes,” he said.
The river viaduct was proposed by Armando U. Khong Hun General Contractor Inc. and was conceived to mitigate and relieve the worsening traffic in the metropolis, which President Duterte admitted in his SONA was estimated to cause economic losses of P3.5 billion per day.
The contractor said the waterway system, once completed, will reduce vehicular traffic along EDSA by 39 percent.
Fameronag said the contractor proposes to construct a viaduct that will run through the lengths of both the Pasig and Marikina Rivers, both being the only open space available in Metro Manila, that will sustain both a vehicular freeway, a gondola-type people mover, and an elevated railway system. Vito Barcelo
It also said the project will not entail any right-of-way costs, the rivers being public patrimony.
AUKH submitted its proposal, a public-private partnership project, complete with a pre-feasibility study and preliminary designs to the DPHW in 2017.
The Lilac Center also lauded Public Works Secretary Mark Villar for assuring the public that the completion of some infrastructure projects across the metropolis this year, such as the C5 South Link, Skyway Stage 3, and Harbor Link extension, will help reduce vehicular volume along the 24-kilometer EDSA.
