Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte is urging traffic managers to reopen the Epifanio delos Santos Avenue-Muñoz interchange and EDSA-West Avenue-North Avenue interchange to ease the worsening traffic in these areas.
She said she has sent a letter to the Department of Transportation, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority and Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board, requesting the reopening of the two intersections.
“We made the request in response to the numerous complaints we received from motorists. While we fully support the national government’s transportation initiatives, particularly the EDSA bus carousel project, we must do a balancing act so that we won’t compromise the welfare of those using EDSA,” she said.
She also suggested to reopen several U-turn slots closed by the national government to give way to the EDSA bus carousel project.
After monitoring the Balintawak area, the city government determined that the bottleneck caused by the reduction of lanes from three to two, per direction, at the EDSA Balintawak Cloverleaf giving way to the exclusive EDSA bus carousel lane, has resulted in heavy traffic at times reaching EDSA corner North Avenue.
“We expect traffic to improve in those areas once our request is granted, especially with the Christmas rush and the easing of our general community quarantine guidelines. The city government is ready to work with authorities to find ways in improving the flow of traffic in intersections, U-turn slots and bus loading bays within the city,” Belmonte said.
The city government fielded additional traffic enforcers in the affected areas and coordinated with MMDA to open closed access roads so that vehicles coming from Quirino Highway to exit at North Luzon Expressway/Camachile and divert vehicles exiting along EDSA toward Monumento.
The measures reduced the congestion along the EDSA-Caloocan area, and that it also addressed the long queue of northbound vehicles in EDSA-Balintawak.
Belmonte also assured that the Department of Public Order and Safety and their other agencies would continue to explore solutions to traffic bottlenecks along the major roads.