Bernadette Reyes | GMA News | April 5, 2018

In what could be a sign of good things to come, 16 MRT3 trains with three cars each were running as of Thursday night — exceeding the previous high of 15 trains recorded in January.

The last time MRT3 operated with 15 functional trains was last January 5.

MRT3 director for operations Michael Capati said 16 trains were running as of 7:24 pm on Thursday, making the waiting time for train arrival in every station at estimated 5.5 minutes.

MRT3 started the day with 11 trains running.

MRT3 management earlier said more trains will be made available due to the arrival of spare parts that will replace wornout ones and following the five-day general maintenance work during the Holy Week.

MRT3, which traverses five cities from Pasay in the south to Quezon City in the north and serves half a million people each day, had no operations from Holy Wednesday to Easter Sunday.

In the past weeks, the MRT3 only had seven to a maximum of 12 running trains, with technical glitches hounding their operation.

MRT management has promised to increase the number of running trains to 20 within the year.