The Department of Transportation ( DOTr) is set to award three more civil works contracts for the country’s first-ever underground railway, Metro Manila Subway project (MMSP), within the first half this year.
In a statement, the DOTr said the construction of MMSP’s partial operability section from Valenzuela to North avenue is now in full swing, and the project’s first two out of 25 tunnel boring machines (TBM) have arrived in 2021.
The project’s completion rate stands at 25.6 percent with target partial completion in 2026 and full operation by 2027.
The MMSP was approved by the National Economic Development Authority board in September 2017. The first tranche loan was signed in March 2018, and its first contract was awarded in November 2018.
Since then, four other contracts have been awarded for civil works of the partial operability section, 240 train cars, and electromechanical systems. Three additional civil works contracts are scheduled to be awarded within the first half of this year, according to DOTr.
The project is expected to reduce travel time between Quezon City and NAIA from the current one hour and 30 minutes to just 35 minutes. It is expected to serve approximately 370,000 passengers per day during its first year of full operations, with capacity to serve up to 1 million passengers per day at later years of operations.
The MMSP is physically interconnected and interoperable with the North-South Commuter Railway (NSCR) System’s south segment, enabling a passenger to board a subway train, for example, in North Avenue Station of MMSP and get off at the Calamba Station of NSCR, without changing trains.
The project involves the construction of a 33- kilometer underground rail line with 17 stations from Valenzuela to Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 and FTI in Taguig.
The MMPS project is among the 89 big- ticket infrastructure projects unfinished by the Duterte administration. – Myla Iglesias
