While the holiday season is something to look forward to, one thing that people dread during this period is traffic. This is especially true for those heading out to the provinces before Christmas. But San Miguel Corporation has some good news for the motoring public going south next month.

The South Luzon Expressway operator says that the tollway will have four more lanes available by the third week of December. The northbound and the southbound sides will get two additional lanes each, thereby increasing the capacity of the 29km stretch between Susana Heights, Muntinlupa, and Calamba, Laguna.

As expected, this will come at the expense of longer queues at tollbooths. In order to address this, SMC has installed license-plate cameras that should eliminate the need for motorists to slow down or stop when paying. But as always, how this system will work in practice is anyone’s guess given the widespread use of fake plates.