Newly sworn-in Transportation Secretary Vince Dizon on Tuesday bared his department’s plans to improve the EDSA bus carousel which would include the construction of bridgeways or concourses to ease access along the busway system’s 23 stations.
At a press conference in San Juan City, Dizon said that he observed that lines of passengers tend to build up at both the EDSA carousel and MRT-3 since most of the stations of the busway and the rail system are connected.
“The ultimate solution is kailangan may dedicated concourse o bridgeway ang busway na hiwalay sa MRT (there should be dedicated concourses or bridgeway that is separate from MRT),” the Transportation chief said.
He said the DOTr will use the concourses or passenger access footbridges along SM Megamall and SM North Edsa being constructed by the SM Group as “model stations” for its plan to build dedicated bridgeways for the entire EDSA carousel system.
“[It] will take between 10 to 12 months… to build separate concourses… We’re going to start the process of bidding out for the improvement of the stations for this year,” Dizon said.
“There’s budget allocated for that, we are going to find out how much we have… Hopefully we will be able to award, bid these contracts… by May, we can already start the bidding process for the construction and rehabilitation of the [busway] stations and maybe we can award by June or July then construction can start by the second half of the year,” the DOTr chief added.
Dizon said the Transportation Department is targeting to complete the construction of passenger access concourses across all stations of the EDSA busway “by around February or March next year.”
“I think within the President’s term, we will really have a proper, very modern busway,” he said.
Privatization
The DOTr chief added that the long-term plan for the EDSA busway was to have its operations and maintenance be handed over to the private sector through a Public-Private Partnership (PPP).
“My suggestion [was] we need to privatize or PPP the operations and maintenance of what we are going to build,” he said.
Dizon’s predecessor, former secretary Jaime Bautista, has been vocal about the government’s plan to privatize the busway system.
Bautista earlier said the feasibility study for the EDSA busway’s privatization will be completed in a few months.
The EDSA carousel is a bus rapid transit (BRT) system that connects Monumento in Caloocan City to PITX in Parañaque City through a network of 23 bus stations along the 23.8 kilometer-long highway. — RF, GMA Integrated News
