Philippines: Metro Manila Bridges Project

Transport / Urban roads and traffic management

The continuous economic development and urbanization in Metro Manila has brought along heavy traffic congestion that causes substantial loss of time and opportunities for commuters and businesses, respectively. With a total road length of 4,882 km (1,159 km national roads and 3723 km local roads), Metro Manila has a well-articulated trunk road network comprising radial (R-1 to R-10) and circumferential (C-1 to C-5) in its metropolis, with interchanges providing grade separations at several intersections of the trunk roads. However, the current traffic demand of 12.8 million trips per day is overwhelming the capacity of the road network. Metro Manila nowadays only has 1 km of road per 424 motor vehicles, and majority of commuters in Metro Manila travel at 10 km per hour on average. It was estimated that the country lost PHP 3.5 billion per day in 2017, due to Metro Manila traffic, and the loss was projected to be PHP 5.4 billion per day in 2035 if no action is taken.

One of the major factors contributing to the inefficiency of Metro Manila''s road network is the inadequate capacity of the existing 30 bridges crossing its major waterways, namely Pasig River, Marikina River and Manggahan Floodway. These bridges currently accommodate 1.3 million vehicles per day. The traffic survey conducted by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) during December 2016-January 2017, shows that (i) the overall level of service of the bridges crossing Pasig River is _F_, which means _forced or flow breakdown_, and (ii) the overall level of service of the bridges crossing Marikina River and Manggahan Floodway is _E_, which means _operation at or near capacity and an unstable level_. Therefore, it is critical that additional crossing structures are built over these waterways to decongest the existing bridges, hence mitigating the risk of overloading them. This will help extend the life of existing bridges and reduce their maintenance cost.

In line with the government's Roadmap for Transport Development for Metro Manila and Its Surrounding Areas to alleviate the traffic congestion in Metro Manila (Footnote 2), partly caused by the constrained capacity of the existing bridges, and the Strategic Framework to Accelerate Infrastructure Development in the Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022, the Project will construct 3 new bridges. It is expected that the construction of the new bridges under the project will decongest the Pasig-Marikina corridor. These new bridges will be designed to be resilient to natural disasters such as flooding and the adverse impacts of global warming. Despite the very limited space available in highly urbanized area of Metro Manila, the locations and alignments of the new bridges were carefully selected to ensure that (i) they contribute significant impact on traffic decongestion; and (ii) they create minimum social and resettlement impacts in the project area.

Five bridges crossing Marikina River and Manggahan Floodway completed.

Capacity of DPWH in bridge design, management and O&M strengthened.