Commuters planning to use the Light Rail Transit Lines 1 and 2 and Metro Rail Transit Line 3 (MRT-3) during the coming Holy Week should reconsider their plans now.
This as Light Rail Manila Corporation (LRMC) announced that LRT 1 will be shut down on April 13, Holy Thursday, to April 16, Easter Sunday.
The purpose of the shut down will be the maintenance works that will be conducted by rail personnel on the said dates.
In an advisory, LRMC said regular service for the LRT and MRT will resume on April 7, Monday, at 4:30 a.m.
LRMC earlier announced that as of December 2016, it is already able to deploy a total of 100 light rail vehicles (LRVs), or up to 30 trains per day.
This is coming from only 77 back in September 2015, when the company assumed operation and maintenance of the train line, marking a 29.87% increase.
With more LRVs serving a daily average of 420,000 passengers and through the implementation of effective management strategies, cycle time (or time for a train to complete a loop) has improved from 118 minutes to 108 minutes.
Efficiency in passenger queuing have also lessened waiting time for trains from 6 minutes to 4 minutes. Early birds and night shifters also have no worries catching the LRT-1 with service now available as early as 4AM and as late as 10:30PM.
The company revealed that LRT-1 also recorded significant increase in ridership, with the last quarter of 2016 posting a 9-12% boost in comparison with the same timeframe in 2015. In fact, LRT-1 transported more than 500,000 riders in several instances late last year. – BusinessNewsAsia.com