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Skyway stage 3 opens to the public and is toll-free for one month

One of the most anticipated sections of roads opens before the start of the new year.

Autodeal on Dec 29, 2020

The San Miguel Corporation has one more gift for motorists this holiday season in the form of the soft opening of the Skyway Stage 3. Initially set to open much earlier in the year, delays brought about by the still ongoing pandemic and by typhoons halted progress. Now that it is open, albeit to a limited degree, motorists can now expect faster travel times from the South to the North and vise versa.

The 18-kilometer stretch of road is projected to cut travel time from SLEX to NLEX to just 20 minutes instead of the regular hours that it used to take. From Magallanes to Balintawak travel time is expected to be reduced to only 15 minutes. On the other hand, travel time from Balintawak to NAIA is expected to also take roughly the same amount of time. Valenzuela to Makati, however, benefits the most as travel time is expected to only take about 10 minutes.

While Skyway Stage 3 isn’t fully operational as only 4 out of the 7 lanes are open to the public it is toll-free for at least one month. Come January 14, 2021, however, all 7 lanes will be usable to motorists as it fully opens. As one of the much-anticipated roads to open this year the new section of the expressway will allow motorists to bypass many of the at-grade roads in and around Metro Manila. It is hoped that this new road will alleviate congestion inside the Metro particularly in areas such as C5 and EDSA.

It is important to note that not all entry and exit points will initially be available during the soft opening of the new segment of the expressway. Come 2021, however, all of these access points will become fully operational and open to all motorists. SMC did not give a specific date as to when this will happen only citing 2021 in their announcement.

We are glad to finally welcome motorists, even on a limited capacity, starting December 29. While this is only a partial opening, given the scale and importance of this project, this is a very significant development.

Ramon S. Ang

Together with the other stages of the Skyway Expressway, San Miguel Corporation will now have a total of 38-kilometers worth of road under its jurisdiction. With the completion of the Skyway Extension project in 2021 which extends the thoroughfare all the way from Susana Heights to Alabang, the entire road network will now have 36 access points from end to end.