EDSA Busway, privatization through PPP

It was rush hour on a rainy Friday night. As I made my way from Makati to Ortigas, I noticed hundreds of commuters waiting for a bus at the Guadalupe station. The line snaked all the way to the stairs leading to the MRT bridgeway itself. The conditions were inhuman, what with the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, humid heat, polluted air and occasional sprays of acid rain. Our countrymen don’t deserve this indignity, I thought. Something must be done to improve their plight.

However degrading the conditions may be, the EDSA Busway is already an improvement from the way it used to be. It will be recalled that just three years ago, hordes of commuters would have to stand beyond the sidewalk and on EDSA itself just to hail a bus. Not only were they exposed to the heat and rain but also the hazard of speeding vehicles.

Buses would arrive and allow passengers to embark and disembark at any point they wished to, even in the middle of the road. Commuters had to elbow their way for a place in the bus.

Back then, the 3,600 buses that plied EDSA caused havoc as they operated without physical barriers. Buses would switch in and out of lanes to pick up passengers, much to the danger of fellow motorists and anyone else that stood in their way. The bus system was a metaphor for our motorist’s lack of discipline and government’s inability to control them.

The EDSA Busway was first proposed in 2015 by the transportation and infrastructure committee of the former Department of Transportation and Communications, chaired by Eduardo “Eddie” Yap. The project was implemented in June 2020 under the command of then DOTr Secretary, Art Tugade.

The EDSA Busway brought a semblance of order to EDSA by allocating an exclusive track for buses in the innermost lane, duly delineated by physical barriers. This allowed buses to ply the route unimpeded, regardless of traffic conditions.

The EDSA Busway is a carousel loop that traverses Balintawak to the PITX station in Pasay, passing through the Mall of Asia, then back to Balintawak again. Only accredited buses are allowed on the route, effectively eliminating colorum buses. At present, the bus stations are located beneath the MRT-3 tracks. They can be accessed by passing through the MRT station bridgeways.

Although the busway takes up one lane on EDSA, it brought order to the traffic flow, made it move faster and allowed commuters a safer and more organized experience.

But by no means is the EDSA Busway fully realized. It is still a makeshift system that is wanting its own access bridges, its own stations and a long checklist of system improvements. If done according to international standards, commuters should enjoy the same convenience and comfort riding a bus as they would riding the MRT.

The upgrade of the EDSA Busway is a project ripe for privatization for four reasons. The need for the upgrade is urgent. Government credit facilities are stretched to a point that it is more prudent to let the private sector take on this investment rather than finance it itself. The private sector has proven to be more competent in operating complex public utilities than government. And lastly, the high ridership renders the project viable for both the private-public partnership (PPP) proponent and the government.

I recently spoke to Transportation Secretary Jimmy Bautista and he said that the privatization of the EDSA Busway is under serious consideration. In fact, two private sector proponents are waiting in the wings to bid for the project. We hope that the terms of reference for the project will be made public soonest.

But what can be done to improve our commuter’s experience in the meantime? Mr. Yap recommends a number of doable measures meant to provide quick relief for our commuters.

Among them is to require “platoon docking” of buses so they can operate like trains; introduce shorter carousel lines for quicker turn-around of buses; enlist the Highway Patrol to control the undisciplined use of the busway by entitled politicians and their escorts; enlist the Highway Patrol to ensure the uninterrupted passage of buses in U-turn areas and transition lanes and, if space permits, increase the capacity of the existing station by widening and/or lengthening the platform.

Mr. Yap also recommended measures to ensure the long-term sustainability of the busway. He proposes to expedite the transfer of doors to the left side from the right side of the bus. Doing so will ensure safety of passengers and speed up the loading/unloading process; eliminate the checkpoints on the busway route such as that on EDSA-Tramo; build a proper station where it is needed most, particularly on Ayala and Taft Avenue; expedite the construction of dedicated footbridges for the Ortigas/Megamall and North EDSA stations to dispense with the use of already crowded MRT3 stations; expedite the pre-board payment system and install turnstiles and, later on, retire the existing diesel buses and replace them with high capacity articulated buses powered by hybrid or electric engines.

The above recommendations are only remedial measures that the DOTr will do well to implement. However, to really elevate the standards of the Edsa Busway, fresh investments need to be made to build proper stations with their own access bridges, install a proper signaling system, provide new buses with higher capacity and less carbon footprint and implement a fare system that is inter-connected with that of the MRT and LRT. The sooner we can get the ball rolling on EDSA Busways privatization, the better for our commuters.

*      *      *

Email: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aj_masigan.