Metro Manila’s footbridges are million-peso monuments to car-centricity

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On December 11, the height of the holiday season, the SM Megamall-Julia Vargas Avenue footbridge is a flurry of activity.

Christmas shoppers are running up the stairs, clutching their shopping bags, eager to get their errands done before the afternoon rush hour. 

But at around 1 pm, a woman’s shout rings out. The buzz of activity stops at the middle level of the stairs in the footbridge near the malls’ Building B. In the middle of a small crowd lies an elderly man, wearing a navy shirt and shorts, still clutching a walking stick and a Watsons paper bag. By his head, blood is spattered on the red tiles.

The woman who shouted calls for assistance. Eventually, someone places a white slipper underneath the man’s head. A security team from the Ortigas Center Association Inc. arrives at the scene, puts the man in a stretcher, and whisks him to the VRP Hospital.

A month later, on January 11, the man dies due to brain hemorrhage. 

The incident report, shown to Rappler, stated that the damage to his brain was because he had “slipped on the stairs of [the] footbridge.” Specifically, he had fallen three steps down and hit his head. 

The man was George Fernandez, a 75-year-old husband and father who lived nearby and liked to walk to the mall every now and then to do errands and buy items, mostly from the grocery or hardware stores. It was his way to pass the time and stay nimble. 

FATAL FALL. George Fernandez falls while walking down a footbridge near SM Mega Mall. Photo from Majo Fernandez

FAILURE OF INFRASTRUCTURE. A response team attends to George Fernandez after his fall on a footbridge. Photo from Majo Fernandez

The day he slipped was his first time using a walking stick, said his daughter Mary Joyce “Majo” Fernandez, in an interview with Rappler. The footbridge where George Fernandez fell has an escalator, but it was not operational that day. 

What happened to George is an extreme example of how footbridges, far from protecting pedestrians, make public transportation inaccessible and even dangerous to the most vulnerable.

“It says a lot about our infrastructure,” said Majo.

“It’s unfortunate for our family that it had to happen to our dad to make people realize that our footbridges are failures. They’re not even safe for persons with disabilities, senior citizens, and vulnerable persons,” Majo said.

Footbridges are among the most common public structures in Metro Manila, a megacity where cars and motorcycles rule the roads and pedestrians are forced into tiny sidewalks or worse, must walk on lanes with speeding vehicles.

There are at least 138 footbridges in Metro Manila, according to data from the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), the government agency that has made it a policy to build footbridges, in partnership with the region’s city governments.

Lodged under “Traffic and Transport Management Services” or the “Traffic Discipline Office,” the budget set aside for building footbridges reached P231.3 million from 2019 to 2023, based on MMDA budget records.

No other city is as studded with footbridges as Metro Manila. Transport experts say this is symptomatic of the region’s car-centricity.

“The abundance of footbridges here in Metro Manila says a lot about our public transportation and our urban planning,” said Camille Fajardo, a senior transport researcher who works for SafeTravelPH, a transport and mobility research and innovation group.

We interviewed her atop the EDSA-Kamuning Footbridge, overlooking a stampede of cars, buses, and motorcycles below. On Google Maps, this footbridge is labeled “Mt. Kamuning,” complete with an icon depicting a hiker, a nod to the structure’s comically high stairs. 

Camille and a former colleague, Sandy Mae Gaspay, did a study for the University of the Philippines about the mode transfer quality indices in Metro Manila, or how easy it is to transfer from one mode of transportation to another.

The international norm is a 500-meter radius — meaning, most pedestrians all over the globe would only be comfortable walking 500 meters, from one mode of transportation to another. This could be walking from a train station to a bus station, or from a taxi drop-off to a shuttle.

But in Metro Manila, that comfort level is reduced. According to a 1995 study by Gloria Gerilla, Kazunori Hokao, and Yashushi Takeyama, Metro Manila commuters are only comfortable with walking a 250-meter radius.

Camille interviewed commuters to find out why this is so. Unsurprisingly, they blamed the lack of decent sidewalks, the exposure to heat caused by a lack of sidewalk coverings or trees and, drum roll, the prevalence of footbridges.

“In an ideal public transportation system, our first and last mile connectivity should be seamless.  But what happens is that we have footbridges which create additional barriers when it comes to walking,” said Camille.

Footbridges make walking in Metro Manila uncomfortable. It also significantly increases effort and time of travel. According to the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), footbridges are, on average, longer than at-grade (level with the ground) crosswalks.

“Compared to an average street crossing of 11 meters, the typical pedestrian bridge spans 103 meters due to ramps or stairways needed to elevate bridges above street level. These bridges are typically built with steep stairs or steep sloped ramps which are particularly challenging for people with disabilities, children, the elderly, and anyone carrying goods,” reads a February 2024 article on the institute’s website.

During our shoot for this story, we saw several people climbing the footbridge who had to stop midway to rest. We saw a pair of adults with a toddler who put their toddler on the steps so they could take a breather.

UPHILL BATTLE. Two adults carry a toddler up the EDSA-Kamuning footbridge in Quezon City. Rappler photo

Mary Abigail Modales, a regular commuter and member of the mobility rights group Move As One Coalition, uses a footbridge in Commonwealth Avenue on her daily route home.

But going to work, she commutes with her mother, who has clinical obesity. Things are far from straightforward for her mom.

“We always have to find a route which does not involve a footbridge. We’re always finding the most dangerous places to cross,” she told us.

“I think that’s the most difficult part, seeing the people you love, your family members, and your friends who have these challenges, forced to use footbridges,” she added.

Commonwealth Avenue has been called the “killer highway” or “highway to hell” because of the frequency of road crashes that happen along its length. An average of 17 fatal road crashes took place here every year, from 2017 to 2021, according to this research by the National Center for Transportation Studies. 

There were 33 crashes there involving pedestrians, out of the roughly 2,500 road crashes from 2019 to 2021, according to the MMDA’s Accident Reporting and Analysis System (MMARAS).

Footbridges, ostensibly, have been built across it to separate pedestrians from vehicles, to keep them safe.

Despite the steady increase in footbridges throughout the metro, road crashes have been on the rise from 2021 to 2023, making their way back to pre-pandemic levels. From over 58,400 in 2021 to nearly 86,000 in 2023, according to MMARAS data.

However, there was a decrease in the number of pedestrians who were hit — from 4,722 recorded incidents in 2019, to 3,491 incidents in 2023.

Pedestrians killed from road crashes already slightly decreased, from 117 in 2019, to 96 in 2023. It’s difficult to attribute this reduction to footbridges.

But one thing is clear, footbridges make car drivers drive faster. The speed of cars is one major factor that increases the deadliness of crashes.

“It promotes faster driving for car users… Since the norm they are used to is for pedestrians to use the footbridge so, since there are no at-grade crossings, their [car drivers’] tendency is to drive fast,” said Camille.

Footbridges also normalize the thinking that pedestrians who do cross the road at ground level are “obstructions.” The thinking is: they shouldn’t be there. 

Another way

Go to a country with great public transportation systems and one thing you will notice is the rarity of footbridges.

Even doing a Google Maps search of footbridges in Paris or Tokyo yields none, or very few. Most of the footbridges that do come out are bridges spanning bodies of water, like rivers or creeks.

New York City, famous for its busy streets and traffic jams, doesn’t have that many footbridges either. What these cities have more of are: at-grade crosswalks. At-grade crosswalks are basically demarcated portions of the road that allow pedestrians to walk across that road on the same level.

In places like Singapore or Bangkok, footbridges typically come with elevators or escalators. 

Instead of building footbridges, New York City is planning to improve its crosswalks by doing something called “daylighting.” Daylighting is the process of making a crosswalk more visible to vehicle drivers, to make it safer for pedestrians, thereby encouraging walking.

Daylighting focuses on the corners of crosswalks, the parts of the crosswalks where crashes of pedestrians and vehicles tend to happen. The corners are made more visible through simple interventions like banning parking (in the Philippines, parking within meters of a crosswalk is illegal, but often not enforced), placing barriers like planters on the corners, and lighting up the crosswalk at night.

Putting stoplights to coordinate the flow of pedestrians vis-a-vis cars is another way to make crosswalks safer, said Camille.

In Metro Manila, some crosswalks are protected by traffic enforcers. This is the case, for instance, in the crosswalk spanning Aurora Avenue, near Robinsons Magnolia Mall in Quezon City.

Improving crosswalks also happens to be much cheaper than building a footbridge, according to ITDP. In Mexico City, a footbridge cost US$85,000. Traffic control systems for crosswalks only cost nearly half as much: US$45,000.

A scan of MMDA budget documents shows a footbridge in Metro Manila costs anywhere from P5 million to P16 million ($86,000 to $275,000). The disparity in costs is even more apparent when it comes to maintenance. Over time, maintaining a footbridge can cost more than twice as much as maintaining an at-grade crosswalk, said ITDP.

“Investing in on-street pedestrian infrastructure ensures significant short and long term returns. Major cities in the Vision Zero network (such as New York City and Boston in the US), as well as cities leading in pedestrian-first designs (Guangzhou, China and Mexico City) are constructing relatively low-cost pedestrian infrastructure projects,” said the ITDP feature.

The Vision Zero network is a group of countries aiming to eliminate deaths from traffic and road crashes.

Instead of more footbridges, New York City plans to daylight 100 crosswalks every year, starting this year, according to this Bloomberg article, which calls daylighting the “cheap street fix that saves lives.”

Safer crosswalks aren't the silver bullet to protect pedestrians. Discipline and enforcement against speeding vehicles, traffic-calming measures, and the like are still necessary to prevent road crashes.

At-grade crosswalks won’t be all that useful if sidewalks leading to them are also not improved. It’s an entire system of pedestrian-first infrastructure and policies that is needed to make a city truly walkable.

This year, the Department of Transportation will start formulating the country’s Active Transport Strategic Master Plan. Palafox Associates, the firm that won the contract to serve as consultant for the project, said the goal is to have a transportation system that puts people first.

“The vision for Philippines 2050 calls for a transportation system that is accessible, safe, sustainable, and people-centric. This means prioritizing active transport as a viable and desirable mode of commuting,” the company said.

The pilot areas for the master plan include Metro Manila and coincide with plans to rehabilitate the Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue, the region’s major artery. Other cities covered by the plan are Iloilo City, Zamboanga City, Surigao City, City of Mati, and Puerto Princesa. 

What role will footbridges have in this plan? Will it bring to life President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s promise in his Philippine Development Plan — that “pedestrians and cyclists will be accorded highest priority in the hierarchy of road users”? – Rappler.com

If you’re a commuter, pedestrian, or driver concerned about the state of our public transportation, join the Liveable Cities chat room in the free Rappler Communities app to talk about these issues. Rappler also has a dedicated page for stories and campaigns about improving quality of life in Philippine cities. Check out the Make Manila Liveable page here.