Contrary to proposals to shutter the road transport network.
In a radio interview with Radyo 630 on Friday, February 7, Department of Transportation (DOTr) Secretary Jaime Bautista clarified the status of the EDSA Busway.
“Yung feasibility study matatapos natin within the next few months. We’re expecting that we will be able to award the O&M of the EDSA Busway by the end of 2026,” Bautista said regarding the matter.
O&M refers to Operations and Management, which the government plans to award to the winning bidder from the private sector, which will run the “bus carousel.”
Earlier this week, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) mulled the removal of the lane should the MRT-3, that runs parallel to most of the bus lane, improves its capacity.
The MMDA said that the lane’s removal will allow the addition of road capacity to the already congested EDSA, which saw an estimated 464,000 vehicles run through it daily.
Although, in a recent press statement, the Department of Transportation called the busway as “the most efficient public road transport system in Metro Manila.“
The DOTr also shared that in 2024 alone, over 63 million commuters “enjoyed an efficient travel experience” along the EDSA Busway.
As of January 2025, the busway also served more than 5.5 million passengers, averaging 177,000 daily commuters, that the DOTr said have “reached their destinations conveniently, safely, and quickly.“
The EDSA busway runs from Caloocan City in the north down to the Parañaque Integrated Terminal Exchange (PITX) in the south.