Cable cars eyed to ease Metro traffic

MANILA, Philippines – Incoming transportation secretary Arthur Tugade is apparently thinking out of the box to resolve the traffic crisis in Metro Manila.

“We are seriously studying the possibility of putting up cable cars in Metro Manila, particularly in the Pasig City area,” he told ABS-CBN News yesterday.

“I also want a cable car linking Makati and Santa Rosa (in Laguna),” he said.

He said there are studies showing that a cable car system could be built in one-and-a-half years.

“One car can carry up to 35 passengers,” he added.

Tugade pointed out that aside from being a transportation mode, a cable car could serve as a vehicle for sightseeing.

He also vowed to resolve the ownership issue plaguing Metro Rail Transit 3, the rail line along EDSA, in the early part of the administration of president-elect Rodrigo Duterte.

“We have to identify who really owns MRT-3 – who operates it. Ownership and maintenance issues will be resolved in our first 100 days,” he said.

These issues have plagued the EDSA rail line during the entire six-year term of President Aquino.

The government operates the line, which is supposedly owned by MRT Holdings of businessman Robert Sobrepeña, who also controlled the failed College Assurance Plan, a pioneer in the industry selling educational and memorial plans.

However, 80 percent of the Sobrepeña firm’s bonds or debt instruments are held by state-owned Landbank and Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP). In fact, the two banks have majority representation in the company’s board of directors.

But the Sobrepeña group insists that Landbank and DBP do not own or control MRT-3, since ownership is different from indebtedness.

To finally settle the ownership issue, President Aquino and Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya proposed in 2014 that the government buy out Sobrepeña and other private investors.

Aquino had included P65 billion in the then proposed 2015 national budget for the buyout, but the appropriation was scrapped in the Senate by Sens. Francis Escudero and Sergio Osmeña III.

The two senators said they did not believe that the proposed buyout would solve the ownership and maintenance problems of MRT-3.

The outgoing administration has procured about 80 train coaches for the EDSA line after successfully fighting off a temporary restraining order obtained by the Sobrepeña group from a Makati court.

Many of the coaches will be delivered this year and next year.

Tugade did not say how he would resolve the EDSA rail line’s ownership issue.

He said he would try to bring back Sumitomo as the maintenance provider of the facility.

He said he also plans to build rail systems in the Bicol region and in the Visayas and Mindanao.

As for the airport congestion problem, Tugade said the international airports in Manila and Clark “can co-exist.”

“We have to develop both,” he added.

He pointed out that in the near future, a new and large international airport has to be built.