By Rizal Obanil

An official of the Metro Rail Transit 3 (MRT-3) believes that with the necessary improvements and rehabilitation forthcoming, MRT-3’s passenger capacity could be doubled in the next two years.

MRT-3 Director for Operations Michael Capati, in an interview on GMA-7’s “Unang Balita”, said that by rehabilitating its rails, upgrading its signaling system and increasing the number of operational trains, the MRT-3’s passenger capacity will increase two-fold.

Capati said that they were aiming to make this possible by July of 2021. He said that from 300,000 passengers the MRT-3’s passenger capacity will increase to 600,000 in the next two years once these improvements are made.

To do this, MRT-3’s number of running trains need to be increased to 20 from the current roster of 15 trains.

Rehabilitation work also needs to be done on the rails which will consequently reduce the travel time of commuters as the train speed will increase to 60 kilometers per hour from its current speed of 30 kph.

Capati said that once the improvements are in place, the average waiting time on MRT platforms would be reduced to 3.5 minutes from the current average of 7.5 minutes.