MANILA -- With the Duterte administration's ambitious program to modernize public transit networks in the Philippines falling far behind schedule, addressing notorious traffic congestion around the capital will likely emerge as a major campaign issue ahead of next year's presidential election.
Scores of commuters excitedly waited for a train at Antipolo station on its opening day on July 5. The elevated station is the last stop on the eastern extension of Light Rail Transit Line 2 that runs east-west across greater Manila and stands over Marcos Highway, a major arterial road.
The project to extend the 13.8 km LRT Line 2 by roughly 4 km and add two stations was part of the metropolitan mass transit system expansion program, which received about 43.3 billion yen ($393 million) in yen loans from Japan. The effort involved numerous partners, including Japanese trading house Marubeni.
The work is designed to address the serious traffic snarl-ups in the capital and its surrounding areas that are said to cost the economy about 3.5 billion Philippine pesos a day in 2017 (roughly $70 million at today's rates) in greater Manila -- or some $25 billion a year.
It takes three to four hours in usual traffic to travel the 17 km by car from Antipolo to Recto station, the western terminal station on Line 2. But an end-to-end ride on the newly extended railway takes a mere 30 minutes, according to the Department of Transportation.
Heavy traffic along Marcos Highway during the pandemic lockdown: Traffic congestion in Metro Manila costs the economy $25 billion a year, according to some estimates. © Reuters The successful completion of the Line 2 work is not a common fate of many of the projects. After taking office in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte pushed for infrastructure updates under the "Build, Build, Build" slogan, attracting funding and support from foreign governments and businesses. Many Japanese companies and the state-backed Japan International Cooperation Agency are involved in railway projects.
The administration initially planned to execute 75 "flagship" projects, and expected, as of November 2018, to complete 31 of them -- or 40% -- by 2022. The plan was downgraded in 2019 to finish 21 projects, or 28%, by the target year.
The flagship list was revised to include more projects in 2019, and the expectations at that time were to complete nearly 60% of them in 2022. But the list was changed again, and as of June, the completion target fell to 34%.
An ambitious project to construct Manila's first underground train line is an example of the delays. Plans for construction of the first phase of the subway were to be completed in 2022. Now, the deadline for the first phase has been postponed to 2023 or later, according to the project list updated in May.
Infrastructure projects involve time-consuming procedures like acquiring land. The coronavirus lockdowns have also forced construction suspensions and delays in procuring materials. Opening dates remain uncertain for many projects, said an official with knowledge of planning.