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Kalayaan Bridge (BGC – Ortigas Center Link)
The Kalayaan Bridge, also known as the Bonifacio Global City (BGC) – Ortigas Center Link opened about a year ago and was supposed to ease traffic along the usual routes along EDSA and C5 that crossed the Pasig River. The new bridge is located between the EDSA and C5 bridges and is a more direct route to and from BGC if you reside in Pasig and choose the route to/from BGC via Pasig/Shaw Boulevard.
The approach ramp to the bridge from the BGC side is in the vicinity of the Uptown part of BGC. The bridge goes over Kalayaan Avenue, which is one of the major access roads to BGC from C5 or EDSA, and J.P. Rizal Avenue Extension but there is access and egress to Kalayaan Avenue.
The ramp is practically a single lane with painted bike lanes on either side of the bridge. There is noticeably no space for pedestrians on this bridge. That is only a curb on the right side. This lack of pedestrian provisions is a major flaw of this bridge.
A lone cyclist traversing the bridge – the merge for traffic from BGC and vehicles from Kalayaan Avenue is seen downstream.
Approaching the merging section (from this perspective; its diverging on the other side) of the bridge.
A motorcycle merges with the traffic from BGC. Notice the chevron markings separating merging flows as well as the yield marking for vehicles coming from Kalayaan (i.e., priority is for vehicles coming from BGC). The bridge from this section becomes two lanes per direction. There is, however, a risky part for cyclists who will cross paths with vehicles coming from Kalayaan. Cyclists from BGC will have to cross a lane to get to the bike lane on the outer side of the bridge. There is no space for pedestrians along this bridge.
There is only this part of the bridge where there appears to be a sidewalk. Was this really the design for this bridge? It is very obvious that many people failed in both design and implementation of this project.
The view towards the Pasig side of the bridge. There are two lanes per direction and narrow bike lanes along the curbsides.
There is an intersection at the end of the bridge but the road immediately at the right is closed to incoming traffic so right turns are currently prohibited despite the pavement markings that indicate they were allowed at one time.
The road leads to this intersection which is in area generally referred to before as ‘Pioneer’. The area hosts many warehouses or storage buildings and I remember going here many years ago to check out the imported wood furniture and office surplus items. Turning right leads one to the area generally known as ‘Unilab’ because that was where United Laboratories had their plant and offices. It retained the property where now stands an events venue. Further on leads you to Kapitolyo and the Estancia Mall.
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Inter-island bridges in the Philippines – Nice to have but not necessary at this time?
A news article came out yesterday, reporting on the shelving of several inter-island bridge projects as well as the progress of only 3 projects include the Panguil Bay Bridge. Many of these projects have been conceptualized a long time ago but were being fleshed out through various feasibility studies.
I’ve written before about these bridges, and had a healthy discussion among friends about the merits and demerits of such infrastructure when there are other, more urgent projects that would probably have higher impacts. One friend was involved in studying the connection between Panay and Negros islands, and had concluded that the cost can be justified by the economic benefits brought about by the bridge. I disagreed, stating the costs could cover modern urban transit systems at least in the major cities of Iloilo and Bacolod.
With limited resources and the likelihood of these projects being funded from various foreign loans make them unpalatable since these will mean more debt for the country. Also, these projects will benefit fewer people compared to other transport projects including modernizing public transportation and building bike lane networks. The latter kinds of projects are for daily commuters whereas the bridges are more for occasional travelers. What do you think?
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How many bike lanes can you make with…?
Someone in a social media group subscribe to posted about the future Bataan – Cavite interlink bridge that will cost 175.7 Billion Pesos for 32.15 kilometers (~5.465B PHP per km). That’s a lot of money but is understandable for a major infrastructure project that will required much state of the art engineering and construction for its implementation. I casually mentioned that it was a nice project but belongs to those I’d classify as “nice to have but not really necessary or urgent at this time.” Others were more direct in saying it was another “car-oriented” project. The price tag is quite hefty and a similar amount could have been used for other, more urgent projects around the country that could benefit more people than this bridge. So for the sake of discussion, let’s try to estimate how much of another project can we make out of the estimated cost for such a bridge.
Perhaps among the more popular items due to the pandemic are infrastructure and facilities for active transportation (i.e., walking and cycling). Many cities have initiated projects that encourage more walking and cycling in order to promote healthier lifestyles as well as to reduce car dependence. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of the US estimates that bike lanes can be developed for $5,000 to $50,000 per mile depending on various factors and conditions. That’s 150,000PHP to 1.5M PHP per kilometer at 48PHP : 1 USD. [Ref: https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/saferjourney1/library/countermeasures/10.htm] Using these numbers we can easily estimate how many kilometers of bike lanes we can produce for 175.7 B pesos. That simple division exercise will give us from 117 thousand (at 1.5M/km) to 1.171 million (at 150k/km) kilometers of bike lanes. For comparison, the Philippine national highway network is 32,932 kilometers. The numbers could mean bike lanes could laid out for the entire national road network with much to spare for provincial, city and municipal roads for connectivity. Funds can even be allocated to improve pedestrian facilities! This begs the question then of how such resources can be used in a more comprehensive manner to benefit a lot more people. From the bragging point of view, won’t such a bike lane network be more impressive than one bridge?
What else can you think about that can be funded by amounts similar to the Bataan – Cavite Bridge or other projects you can tag as “nice to have but not really necessary or urgent”?
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The FVR Road and Bridge after Typhoon Ulysses
This is a continuation of the feature on the aftermath of Typhoon Ulysses (Vamco). I am posting this here as part of my archives on the floods in the Marikina Valley.
There’s a road branching off from Marcos Highway that links to a bridge crossing the Marikina River and connects with the FVR Road along the Marikina Riverbanks. The following photos speak for themselves in as far as the mud and garbage that was left after the floods subsided.
Descending from Marcos Highway, only one of two lanes are passable after heavy equipment moved tons of mud and garbage to the roadsides. The fences trapped a lot of garbage, too, as seen in the photo.
Piles of mud and garbage at the service road leading to the east bank of the Marikina River and the SM Marikina access road.
Under the Marcos Highway Bridge, garbage, mostly plastics, remain on the wire fences. This area was totally submerged during the height of the floods with water reaching the underside of the bridge. Fortunately, the bridge seems undamaged.
Even lamp posts and electric poles caught a lot of garbage.
The Olandes housing development was surely affected by the swelling of the river.
The FVR Road leading to C-5 is already clear for 2-lane traffic but you can see the mud and garbage all around. The dried mud has turned into dust (alikabok) that blows away as vehicles pass through the road. There is also mud on the plants in the median planters as this area was also submerged during the height of the typhoon.
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Traffic congestion due to Barkadahan Bridge rehab
Here are more photos of the situation in the vicinity of Barkadahan Bridge. Photos were taken on a late Sunday morning (around 11 AM). Photos show the traffic congestion particularly along the eastbound side of Ejercito Avenue and Barkadahan Bridge.
Even before completely crossing the bridge, one can see how long the queue from C-6 is. This is a photo of the queue just past the West Bank Road. The road here is names Ejercito Avenue after former Pres. Joseph Estrada whose real family name is Ejercito.
Truck occupying an entire lane and encroaching on one of the lanes to C-6. This is due to the bottleneck caused by the wall of a residential subdivision across from the Greenwoods gate. The wall actually only contains the subdivision name and yet DPWH has been unable to expropriate the land that includes part of that subdivision’s driveway.
Long queue extending towards Tapayan Bridge along Ejercito Avenue
Queue along Tapayan Bridge or bridges considering there are two – one for each direction of traffic.
Queue crossing the bridge and the bend towards C-6 and Lupang Arenda, which is a major relocation site for Metro Manila squatters during the time of then Pres. Joseph Estrada. Vehicles turn left towards C-6 while those going straight continue along Ejercito Avenue towards Pinagbuhatan, Pasig City.
The queue reaches C-6 on a Sunday morning. It is likely worse on weekdays.
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Status of Barkadahan Bridge, Taytay, Rizal
I recently wrote about the Barkadahan Bridge and its current state and compared it to the Marcos Highway Bridge that is now completed and fully opened to travelers. Unfortunately, I didn’t have photos to share but only shared my observations based on what friends have told me and what I’ve read on social media (i.e., Rizal Provincial’s and Taytay’s official Facebook pages) about the situation there. I finally had the opportunity last Sunday when I went to fetch my family at the airport. Here are photos of the Barkadahan Bride and its environs. Note that Barkadahan is actually two bridges and not one. The new one is currently being used for two way traffic (one lane each) while the second one is under rehabilitation and retrofitting. The latter had and will have 2 lanes, too.
Approach to the Barkadahan Bridge via Highway 2000 – notice the widening on the south side of the highway? That’s the ROW expropriated to align the bridge(s) with the highway. Ultimately, this should be of the same width as C-6.
Closer to the bridge, you see more of the ROW acquired to improve the geometry for the area and the intersection with the East Bank Road. Highway 2000 is now aligned with the second (newer) bridge constructed that will eventually carry only the eastbound traffic. The older bridge currently being rehabilitated and retrofitted will carry the westbound traffic.
Vehicles crowd on the two-lane bridge that is the new Barkadahan Bridge. The old one is currently being rehabbed. Notice the significant volume of trucks using the bridge? This is expected to increase due to the industrial developments in Rizal Province and along C-6, and the direct route this corridor provides towards the SLEX via Bicutan.
Big sign at the bridge – there are many of these scattered around Pasig and Rizal advising travelers against using the route and Barkadahan Bridge because for the construction work on the bridge. This ‘avoidance’ basically transferred (some say returned) much of the traffic to Ortigas Avenue Extension. Many if not most users of the bridge use this alternate route to travel from Rizal to BGC and Makati CBD.
A peek at the construction work on the old bridge – note that the contractor seems to have completed installing the steel reinforcement for the slabs for this section of the bridge. The next phase would be the concrete pouring.
Still another peek showing the extent of the work on the old bridge – my casual observation of the work areas was that there seems to be not so many workers. But then maybe it was a Sunday? Perhaps there should be more people working considering this is a very urgent project?
Tricycles, motorcycles and bicycles – there’s a lot of local traffic using the bridge and these are represented by mostly tricycles serving the residential and commercial areas along the East and West Bank Roads and the cyclists you most often see crossing the bridge. Most motorcycles are through traffic. On weekends one can observe more recreational cyclists as this route is a popular one to Rizal and particularly its mountainous areas that are popular to mountain and road cyclists.
Counterflow – many motorcyclists tend to counterflow and this adds to the friction and slows down traffic. Once the other bridge is completed and re-opened, these will likely be reduced to lane splitting or filtering as the opposite flows of traffic will be assigned to separate bridges. Counterflow traffic will then be very obvious and should be apprehended.
Here’s the resulting queue on the other side of the bridge. This is severe congestion that reaches C-6. Note that the photo was taken on a Sunday. Perhaps these travelers have no other option but to use this route so they are stuck in hellish traffic on a Sunday? I can only imagine how worse it is on weekdays.
As a parting shot, I think there are still a couple of things that need to be addressed once the bridges are both open to traffic:
- Optimizing traffic management at the intersections with the East Bank Road and West Bank Road of Manggahan Floodway – the (mis)management of traffic here also contributes to congestion in the area. Traffic enforcers on both ends of the bridge have basic knowledge of how traffic must be managed and end up with the “buhos” approach. They don’t seem to be coordinating with each other, too. Their approach also heavily favors the East and West Bank roads when traffic is heavier along the main corridor that is C-6/Highway 2000. There needs to be a more efficient way to manage traffic here and that may be in the form of a sophisticated traffic signal system at least for the two intersections. Settings need to be studied and signals have to be adaptive to the variation of traffic throughout the day.
- Resolve bottlenecks in the area including structures that tend to reduce capacities of the approaches to the bridge.
More on this topic soon!
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The Barkadahan Bridge situation
The Barkadahan Bridge is currently undergoing rehabilitation. To be accurate, the old bridge is being rehabilitated and upgraded/retrofitted to be able to carry the traffic projected to use it being a vital link between the Province of Rizal and Metro Manila via Pasig and the C-6 corridor. The bridge is named after the “friendship” established among Rizal municipalities and Pasig City for an area that has been subject of a territorial dispute among them. These are the municipalities of Cainta and Taytay (Rizal Province) and the city of Pasig. The bridge spans the Manggahan Floodway, much of which is in Pasig City.
To increase the capacity for this crossing, which is the most direct route to C-6 and popular among many headed to Taguig/BGC and Makati, a new bridge had been constructed to the south of the old one. The older one had 2 traffic lanes and was no longer sufficient for the volume of vehicles crossing it after the expansion of C-6 resulting to it steadily gaining more users over the years. Use of this route cut down travel times between Rizal and BGC and Makati by at least 30 minutes based on our experiences using the route.
Late last year as far as I could recall, the new bridge opened and immediately increased capacity but then congestion quickly set-in due to two factors: the traffic management at the intersection with the East Bank Road and the constrained (two-lane, two-way) leg of Highway 2000. Add to this the lack of discipline by local traffic in the form of tricycles and motorcycles counter-flowing in the area.
Earlier this year, signs were posted around Rizal about the then impending project for the rehabilitation of the old bridge. The signs advised for most travellers to avoid using the Barkadahan Bridge due to the congestion in the area because of the project. It turns out that what was thought by most as a project retrofitting the old bridge alone was actually a bigger one involving increasing the capacity of the Highway 2000 leg of the intersection with the East Bank Road. Following is a photo posted at the official Facebook page of the Rizal Provincial Government showing the demolition of buildings and other structures along the Highway 2000 leg. The photos were taken from the new Barkadahan Bridge approaching the intersection, the southbound direction of the East Bank Road, and from the westbound side of Highway 2000.
Demolition and clearing of ROW for the expansion of Highway 2000 in relation to Barkadahan Bridge [Photo collage from the Lalawigan ng Rizal Facebook page]
From the photos above, it is clear that at least 2 lanes will be added to Highway 2000 and that this leg will soon be well-aligned with the Barkadahan Bridge, which will also have a total of 4 lanes. Hopefully, this project will be completed soon and within the year (before December?) in order to alleviate the commuting woes of Rizalenos working in the BGC and Makati CBD areas. Of course, that goes without saying that there is also a need to optimise the traffic signals at the intersection and to strictly enforce traffic rules and regulations vs. erring motorists in the area.
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A little bit of history – on how the US interstate highway system came to be
Here’s one of those quick shares that I usually post here. I am a bit of a history buff and mixing that with transport will likely lead to a post like this. Here is a short article about an event in the history of the US Army that happened 100 years ago:
editor@aashto.org (2019) Celebrating Highway History: The US Army’s 1919 Cross-Country Convoy, aashto.org, https://aashtojournal.org/2019/07/12/celebrating-highway-history-the-u-s-armys-1919-cross-country-convoy/ [Last accessed: July 12, 2019]
The article was particularly interesting for me because of two items: the road conditions and the man behind the US inter-state highway system. It took them a little over 2 months to cross the continental US because of poor road conditions. Many people have no sense of history and appreciation of what has been accomplished over the years and how difficult it was to travel at the time. I haven’t done the cross country trip but I have close friends who’ve done it and are thankful for the generally good roads they could use for the experiential road trip. Meanwhile, the person in the article – then Lt. Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower – is a man who made his mark in history at first as the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in the European Theater in World War 2, who would later on become President of the US. I read elsewhere that the US interstate highway system was designed so aircraft may use them as runways in cases when the US were at war and the enemy had bombed their airports and airfields (just like what the Japanese did in the Pacific).
Do we have similar accounts for our roads and bridges in the Philippines? Were there key persons who may or may not be larger than life figures instrumental in developing our road infrastructure with their vision and leadership (Marcos doesn’t count because of his bogus military record and corrupt regime)? It would be nice to compile these and perhaps it should be a collaboration between the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the National Historical Commission (NHC). They could even get the history departments of local universities involved for us to understand the evolution of transportation in this country.
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Reservoir roads – Part 2
Previously, I posted about the reservoir roads we crossed when we traveled to Baler, Aurora last April 2019. It’s been a while since that post so before I forget, here are more photos of those reservoir roads taken during our return trip from Baler.
The two lane highway becomes a single lane section at the Diayo River Reservoir road
A view of the fish pens at the Diayo River reservoir
Pristine waters with the Sierra Madre mountain range in the background
Approaching the end of the Diayo reservoir road
There is a checkpoint at the 2-lane section bridging the Diayo reservoir road with the Canili River reservoir road
Vehicles entering the Canili reservoir road – this again is a one-lane, one-way section where vehicles from either direction would have to give way to either.
Shoulder and fish pens
Waters of the Canili River Reservoir with the Sierra Madre mountains in the background
Fishermen on a banca – they looked like they were inspecting their fish pens
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Traffic management schemes for the Marcos Highway bridge rehab
The rehabilitation of the Marcos Highway Bridge in Marikina has necessitated traffic management schemes at the bridge itself and along alternative routes to alleviate congestion in the area. These are collectively called traffic or transport systems management (TSM) schemes with the objective of optimising existing infrastructure and resources without necessarily building something entirely new. These are quite different from travel demand management (TDM) schemes that include number coding and truck ban policies that are already being implemented (though Marikina does not implement the number coding scheme).
Traffic build-up at the approach to the intersection with FVR Road (To Riverbanks). This is now a signalised intersection as traffic from Blue Ridge/White Plains is now allowed to cross to FVR Road.
Using the route via FVR Road (Riverbanks) means you don’t have to cross the Marcos Highway Bridge and travellers will merge with those who crossed the bridge just before the Line 2 Santolan Station.
In the mornings, one lane each is allocated for either the eastbound or westbound traffic. That’s practically a total of 3 lanes (+2 lanes westbound for the SM Marikina Bridge) for the westbound direction and a single lane for the eastbound side. This is logical given the directional distribution of traffic at this time of day and the alternative routes already available to travellers.
Here are a few photos taken on a night time drive. Note that this was taken by a passenger. Don’t even try doing this (taking photos) while driving a vehicle, and especially not while on a motorcycle.
Entrance to the bridge right after Maj. Dizon – this part is not affected by the rehab works but vehicles position themselves to shift towards the left side, which is the usable part of the bridge.
Both lanes of the westbound side of the bridge are used for eastbound traffic. Westbound traffic are all along the SM Marikina bridge for a total of 2 lanes each for either direction of flow. The cones are not removed for practicality since they would have to be installed for the morning when one lane is allocated for the westbound traffic.
Vehicles shift to the right to return to the correct lanes for eastbound traffic along Marcos Highway at the Santolan area. Note the westbound vehicles shifting towards the underpass and SM Marikina on the left.
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Caught (up) in traffic 