MANILA, Philippines - The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) is mapping out measures to alleviate the heavy vehicular traffic flow in and around the metropolis’ main shopping districts and EDSA during the Christmas season, an official said yesterday.
MMDA chairman Francis Tolentino met yesterday with top executives of the Ayala Center and the Ortigas Center to find ways to ease traffic flow at the two popular shopping districts, which connects with the 28-kilometer long EDSA.
“Traffic is everybody’s concern. We should look at it holistically rather than limiting our concerns to within one area of jurisdiction only,” he said.
Traffic officials from Makati and Pasig also attended the meeting.
Tolentino said Ayala Center and the Ortigas Center contribute heavily to the volume of vehicular traffic along EDSA as these are the areas where the large shopping malls are located.
Tolentino, in particular, urged SM Megamall – which he considers a part of the Ortigas Center – to inform the MMDA beforehand of any major sale that would tend to draw a large number of shoppers, in order to put in place the needed traffic plan along EDSA.
“Our experience is that during any sale, traffic leading to and from SM Megamall along EDSA is terrible. We should be notified beforehand so we could plan and make contingencies,” Tolentino said.
Tolentino also raised the traffic bottleneck problem at the EDSA-Ayala Avenue intersection with officials of the Ayala Center officials and traffic executives of the Makati City government.
According to Tolentino, traffic lights along the stretch of Ayala Avenue should be synchronized to allow a faster flow of traffic into the Makati central business district during the morning rush hour.
Data from the MMDA Traffic Engineering Center show that at least 1,896 vehicles enter Ayala Avenue from EDSA’s southbound lane every hour during the morning rush period between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. while 1,309 vehicles stream from the Magallanes area.
