The Department of Transportation announced that the Metro Rail Transit will be providing free rides on the 122nd Rizal Day on December 30, 2018.
On a Facebook post, the agency announced that commuters can board the MRT-3 for free from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. and from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Sunday to mark the 122nd death anniversary of national hero Jose Rizal.
The MRT-3 and the Light Rail Transit which traverse Metro Manila are known to regularly give free rides to passengers during holidays and other special occasions. This year, free rides were also offered to women on International Women’s Day (March 8), war veterans on the Day of Valor (April 5-11), workers on Labor Day, and to the general public on Independence Day (June 12).
Free rides have been offered to the general public on Rizal Day in previous years.
The MRT-3 management amid the December 2018 holiday rush pledged to assist commuters traversing traffic-plagued EDSA by improving the transit line’s services.
It extended the train’s operating hours for Christmas and New Year that month and also deployed the second of the new CRRC Dalian trains for test runs ahead of the height of the Christmas rush.
The transportation agency previously said that it was looking to increase the number of operational trains to 20 a day by the end of 2018.
Rehabilitation of the crowded train line is scheduled to begin in January 2019. The project hopes to improve the speed of trains from 30 kilometers per hour to 60 kilometers per hour, reduce headway time from seven minutes to three-and-a-half minutes and maintain a constant of 20 operational trains a day.
The rehabilitation is estimated to take 43 months before completion.
