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🚲 Mobility
🇵🇭 Manila

EDSA Busway (Carousel)

Metro Manila's main artery got a median bus lane in June 2020 as a pandemic measure, and it stayed. The 28 km corridor between Monumento and Roxas Boulevard carried 66.7 million passengers in 2025, about 183,000 a day on the transport department's own count. A data layer came late: the transport department and the MMDA switched on 166 CCTV cameras, 21 of them AI-equipped, in July 2024 to time how long buses sit at stations and catch lane intruders, and QR fare payment began on 260 buses in December 2025. A 2020 beep-card mandate collapsed within a week, the QR rollout still covers part of the fleet, and riders reach median stations by footbridge or across live traffic.

Live 📅 since 2020 🤖 Uses AI ✔ Editor-reviewed

✔ Reviewed by the 1001 Smart Cities editorial desk · 🔎 Last verified

🚲 MobilityPublic transportTraffic managementSmart ticketingSensors & IoTArtificial intelligenceSafety & security

📊 Impact

66,669,287 passengers carried in 2025, about 183,000 a day, up 5.8% on 2024, with a single-day peak of 321,186 in April 2025 on the transport department's figures.

🎓 Lesson

A busway can be improvised out of barriers and paint in weeks. The sensing, fare and station layers took four more years and are still unfinished.

Evidence🏛️ Official
Scale🗺️ Regional
Cost≈PHP1.4bn released by the budget department for the extended free-ride period alone
FundingNational government (transport department and MMDA); free rides via budget-department service-contracting releases

Sources

↗ MMDA — new busway stations and a smart traffic surveillance system (15 July 2024)Primary announcement of the busway data layer: 166 CCTV cameras, 21 with AI, along the whole Monumento to Roxas Boulevard route, monitoring bus loading time and driver violations. Blocks automated fetching (403); wording confirmed via the identical presidential communications release and the carrier below.
↗ LTO Portal — the transport department and MMDA launch two new busway stationsAccessible carrier of the camera sentence quoted above, and the source for the station count of 23 pick-up and drop-off points as of July 2024. The count has since moved, so no station number appears in the entry.
↗ Philippine News Agency — the busway serves a record 66.7 million passengers in 2025Transport-department ridership: 66,669,287 passengers in 2025, about 183,000 a day, up from 63,022,953 in 2024, with a single-day peak of 321,186 in April 2025. Self-reported by the operating department and not independently audited.
↗ GMA News — a cashless option arrives on the EDSA Carousel (17 December 2025)Supports the QR fare rollout: a wallet QR system launched 17 December 2025 on 260 busway units, with fares scanned from the conductor's device, and full implementation expected to take about a year.
↗ beep — press release on the EDSA loop and the automated fare collection systemThe card issuer's account of the tap-in and tap-out scheme mandated on the busway from 1 October 2020, the cashless mandate that was suspended within a week and never became universal.
↗ GMA News — the EDSA rehabilitation begins on 24 December 2025Supports the rebuild counterweight: works started at 23:00 on 24 December 2025 and blocked the three innermost lanes including the busway, with night works running to 31 May 2026.
↗ Top Gear Philippines — partial lane closures for the EDSA rehabilitation, July 2026Currency check: as of July 2026 the second phase is still closing the bus lane in stretches overnight; the busway is degraded but operating, not replaced or elevated.
↗ Department of Budget and Management — 1.4 billion pesos released for the extended free-ride schemeThe budget department's own record of the money behind the free-ride period. Intermittently returns 503 to automated fetching. A widely quoted 10-12 million pesos a day running cost is a ministerial remark rather than an audited figure and is not used.
↗ Asian Development Bank — the EDSA Greenways projectThe financed elevated-walkway programme meant to fix pedestrian access to the median stations, repeatedly delayed rather than cancelled, which is why riders still cross live traffic.
↗ PPP Center — a feasibility study is ordered for busway privatisationConfirms that a concession to operate and maintain the busway is still only under study, so the entry does not claim privatisation as fact.
📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “EDSA Busway (Carousel)” — Manila, Philippines. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/manila-edsa-busway/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

🔗 Related projects

🇮🇩 TransJakarta BRT & Mikrotrans Angkot Integration · Jakarta Jakarta built a full BRT in 2004, now 1.4m riders a day; Manila improvised a median lane in 2020 and its riders cross live traffic. 🇵🇭 beep Card: Metro Manila's Concession-Run Transit Fare System · Manila The busway's 2020 beep-card mandate collapsed in a week; QR fares finally reached 260 buses in December 2025. 🇵🇭 MMDA Metrobase Traffic Command Centre & Public Traffic Feed · Manila Same agency, two camera estates: Metrobase watches 403 road cameras; the MMDA switched on 166 more along the busway in 2024. 🇵🇰 Karachi Red Line BRT · Karachi Two busways, two speeds: Manila painted its lane in weeks in 2020; Karachi's Red Line, funded since 2022, is still under construction.

🧭 Explore the atlas

🏙️ Manila Explore every verified project and the city's smart-city story. 🚲 Mobility Browse the main topic behind this project. 📖 Adaptive traffic signals Traffic lights that retime themselves in real time from live sensor data to match actual traffic, instead of running a fixed pre-set schedule. 📖 ANPR (automatic number-plate recognition) Camera technology that reads vehicle number plates automatically, used to enforce road-pricing and clean-air zones without toll booths. 📖 Bus rapid transit (BRT) Bus service given metro-like speed and reliability through dedicated lanes, prepaid boarding and signal priority — pioneered in Curitiba in 1974. 🚦 Asphalt or algorithms Read the wider analysis and comparison. 🪦 Why smart cities fail Read the wider analysis and comparison.

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