SMC to open Skyway Stage 3 by April 2020

MANILA, Philippines — San Miguel Corp. (SMC) plans to open its Skyway Stage 3 project by April next year to take half of EDSA’s current vehicle load, an official said over the weekend.

“With the opening of Skyway Stage 3, more vehicles will be using the expressway. We want to eliminate choke points and give motorists a seamless connection from north to south and vice-versa,” SMC president and chief operating officer Ramon Ang said.

The project stretches from Gil Puyat Avenue in Makati and goes through San Juan, Manila and Quezon City all the way to the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX).

Ang 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.

“Today, travel time between Balintawak up to Buendia in Makati takes several hours. With the Skyway Stage 3, that will only take 15 minutes. Motorists from the south can also go directly to any point in Makati, Manila, Quezon City, and bypass Alabang and EDSA,” he said.

More importantly, Ang said the Skyway Stage 3 project would take out about 50 percent of vehicles on EDSA.

“That is why we are asking for just a little more patience and cooperation from the public. This is for all of us – a solution to our longstanding problem of traffic. If we do not do this now, for sure, the situation will be much worse for all of us in the very near future,” Ang said.

Ang also reiterated his apology to those who continue to be inconvenienced by the company’s Skyway Extension project in the south.

Ang is assuring significant improvement in the traffic flow along South Luzon Expressway (SLEX) starting next month once a new two-lane ramp from Alabang to Skyway becomes operational.

He said a temporary steel on-ramp that the company has started to install to connect the Alabang viaduct to the Skyway would be operational by Dec. 1.

The ramp, which will have two lanes, will expand the northbound section of SLEX in Alabang from three to five.

“This is the main reason why we are building the Skyway extension. We want to make the northbound and southbound sections five lanes each all throughout,” Ang said.

“The limitations in the original design of the SLEX is that it has five lanes coming from Susana Heights heading to Alabang. However, this narrows to four lanes at the Alabang viaduct and connects with the Skyway at-grade that has only three lanes. This is the main reason why Alabang has always been a chokepoint for traffic,” he said.

Heavy traffic along the northbound lane of SLEX started on the evening of Sept. 24 with the closure of its outermost lane after the Alabang viaduct. The closure was made in line with the P10-billion Skyway Extension project being undertaken by SMC to provide a solution to perennial traffic congestion on SLEX.