THE GOVERNMENT agencies with rehabilitating Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) will ditch the conventional building methods they had planned to employ and will pursue a new approach, including the possible use of new technology, the Department of Transportation (DoTr) said.
“We cannot do the project in a conventional way. The rebuild as presented will not be followed. It will be scrapped, the President ordered us to change the whole plan to find a better way,” Transportation Secretary Vivencio B. Dizon said at a briefing on Monday.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. has ordered the postponement of the rehabilitation by one month. It had originally been scheduled to start in mid-June.
Mr. Marcos on Sunday suspended the planned rehabilitation and ordered a new approach that will minimize inconvenience to the public and the impact on the economy.
The P8.7-billion rehabilitation had been initially expected to take two years.
“We need a better way to ensure that our people are not inconvenienced for two years. (Mr. Marcos) wants it done in six months or if possible, less than a year,” Mr. Dizon said.
The EDSA rehabilitation project led by the Department of Public Works and Highways aims to reconfigure EDSA into a green and walkable highway. The DoTr and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority are also among the agencies tasked with executing the project.
Mr. Dizon has assured that there will be no change in the project cost.
Nigel Paul C. Villarete, senior adviser on public-private partnerships at the technical advisory group Libra Konsult, Inc., said new technologies to expedite construction should have been considered at the project’s inception.
“It’s not as if the existing technologies are difficult to find, assess, and choose,” Mr. Villarete said via Viber.
“This should also teach us to perform holistic evaluation and analyses of major transportation projects so as to ensure that economic benefits are kept to the fullest and not degraded by delays,” he said.
Mr. Villarete also said exploring the most appropriate technology and approach in implementing a project should not take much time. — Ashley Erika O. Jose
