San Miguel Corp. to pursue elevated EDSA proposal

MANILA, Philippines — Conglomerate San Miguel Corp. (SMC) will pursue its plan to construct an elevated expressway along EDSA, as it completes the submission of its proposal to the Department of Transportation (DOTr).

“We have submitted all the requirements to the DOTr. I hope we can convince Secretary Arthur Tugade to fast-track the processing,” SMC president and COO Ramon Ang said.

Should the project get immediate government approval, Ang said SMC could start building the elevated expressway by the middle of next year and complete it in two years.

Ang is bent on pursuing the project to help resolve traffic along EDSA.

He earlier said that SMC could spend at least $3 billion for the proposed elevated expressway from Macapagal Avenue all the way to Balintawak or Samson Road, Quezon City.

The proposal, which according to Ang is based on a 38-kilometer elevated steel expressway in Jakarta, is a 10-lane expressway composed of five southbound lanes and five northbound lanes.

Ang said traffic has been a major problem for Filipinos for many years and it could only get worse if nothing would be done about it.

He said some one million vehicles are added to the country’s roads annually and yet, EDSA has served as the lone connector between northern and southern Luzon.

The SMC official, however, earlier said EDSA traffic would finally ease by April next year with the completion and opening of the firm’s Skyway Stage 3 project.

The project, which stretches from Buendia, Makati to San Juan, Manila, Quezon City, all the way to the North Luzon Expressway, is expected to take out about 50 percent of vehicles on EDSA.

SMC is a diversified conglomerate which is in the businesses food and beverage, power, tollways and infrastructure.