SECRETARY Mar Roxas, who said the administration will fast-track the upgrading of the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) at the Clark Special Economic Zone into a real, honest-to-goodness international airport worthy of the name, should simultaneously consider accelerating the Skyway Stage 3 Project to complement his other initiative, i.e., the reconfiguration and speeding up of the much-delayed NorthRail Project.
Properly implemented, these projects will greatly enhance our competitiveness as a tourism and investments destination, ease the traffic congestion in Metro Manila and its environs, and open up Northern and Central Luzon to their real potentials as drivers of the economy. We note that these three regions combined make up almost 75 percent of the country’s gross domestic output and remain its industrial, financial and administrative center. For sometime now, these areas’ potentials have been constricted by the stop-and-go implementation of its development master plan, a plan that dates back to the 1970s, and which pointed to a three-way growth direction, one going south all the way to Bicol, which has also suffered from a number of deviations, going north all the way to the Ilocos, and east all the way to Nueva Ecija, Aurora and Cagayan. Hopefully, under Secretary Roxas’s direction, no less than President Aquino himself will now take notice and proceed with deliberate speed in implementing this long-overdue undertaking.
The Skyway 3 project
Quite apart from Roxas’s passionate involvement in these critical transportation and infrastructure projects, there should no longer be much of a problem pushing the Skyway Stage 3 (SS3) project. Why so? Simply because the Department of Justice (DOJ) has also ruled that “…there is no more legal impediment in the implementation of the toll-operation agreement [TOA] among the parties to the project…,” that is, the government through the TRB, the PNCC and Citra Group, the project developer. For a while there, the TOA was a kink, especially after the PNCC was unable to extend its tollways franchise beyond its 50-year term. Now, the DOJ has ruled that the same is no longer a problem, noting that the TRB can actually provide that cover inasmuch as PNCC has residual interests in the entire operation and that a new franchise may, in fact, be granted if properly crafted and endorsed by the President himself. In short, that should not stand in the way of implementing a critical undertaking such as this one.
To illustrate the critical importance of implementing this project soonest, we note that the SS3 project is the “missing link” in the otherwise seamless 30-kilometer Metro Manila Skyway (MMS) Project connecting the North and South Expressways. The SS3 Project is the 14-kilometer elevated tollway connecting the Buendia (Makati) end of the now much-improved Skyway portion to Alabang all the way to the Nlex approach in Balintawak. In a way, the SS3 will traverse Central Metro Manila, using the median of Quirino Avenue, G. Araneta Avenue and A. Bonifacio, all of which are now congested and overused. By having this elevated corridor, traffic along the major thoroughfares, i.e., Edsa and C-5, to name just two, will ease considerably, thus opening up the others to free-flowing patterns that heretofore could not be worked out no matter how MMDA Chairman Francis Tolentino experiments and contorts to do so. In fact, with Public Works Secretary Babes Singson under fire for letting his boys “experiment” at a horrendous price with what they call the new “fiber technology” on one of the metropolis’s major flyovers on Osmeña Boulevard and Buendia, the SS3 Project will probably save him a lot of sweat and tears. That is, if he has already come to terms with the stupidity of his own crew and his stubborn refusal to concede that this experiment has not only been a total technical failure but a plunderous one, at that. If he does not want to concede on the Osmeña flyover, he should ask his crew to check on the Romulo Highway in the Tarlac (First District) portion of the Maharlika Highway, in Nueva Ecija and parts of the national highway in Bataan. And we are just talking here of three of the more visible ones. What about the others in Ilocos, Bicol, Samar, Leyte and parts of Mindanao, aber? But that will be another column.
In any event, this $500-million SS3 Project deserves priority attention, given its critical importance in the scheme of things. It will not only be a testament to the much-avowed “investment-friendly” spin of this administration, it will mobilize lots of suppliers and subcontractors and will probably employ close to 5,000 people at its peak. More important, having been studied to death, as it were, it need not go through another round of “review and reconfiguration,” which could delay its implementation for years on end. It is, in a very real sense, an off-the-shelf project, complete with a developer that has been raring to go since at least three years ago. Even the usual problems of right-of-way, illegal structures and settlers, to name just three of the more contentious ones that usually stand in the way of such major infrastructure works, have all been addressed. So, what is the administration waiting for?
And now to DMIA/Clark
On the other hand, Secretary Roxas should immediately respond to the announced desire of the BCDA, by itself and through its subsidiaries—the Clark Special Economic Zone and Clark International Airport Corp.—to undertake the upgrading of the DMIA/Clark International Airport. Like the SS3 Project, this one is long overdue. Loads upon loads of paperwork have been done on this undertaking and no more “review and reconfiguration” are needed. There is a real need to upgrade this airport into international class at the soonest possible time, if we are serious about our dream of becoming a tourism and investment hub, as well as a financial-services center in this part of Asean. For so long, we have dilly-dallied in undertaking this project for one reason or another. We have run out of reasons this time around. Not only is the Manila International Airport complex totally overcrowded; it has become such a hazard to the health and lives of people living in and around the area, and to travelers and airport users, as well. It has also become a costly proposition as far as the major air transport users are concerned.
We are told, for example, that commercial flights take at least 30 minutes to take off or land due to the heavy volume of users of the complex. If we were to measure this in terms of pesos and centavos, we’d have a very stiff price to pay. And we are only talking here of the “take off and landing” problem, and not even the potential accidents that such an overload can bring. What about the stranded costs of vehicles, man-hours and the like of people and other airport users as a result of the horrendous traffic coming in and going out of the premises of the three terminals all smack in the middle of congested zones. We can go on enumerating all the other problems associated with the heavy use of this airport it is close to treason for anyone to even suggest that we stay as is and let things be. No, sir. We should now get moving and let the DMIA/Clark complex be transformed into the international airport we’ve always wanted it to be. It is time we unshackle ourselves from the bondage attached to the never-ending reasons why we should continue being enslaved by this tragic fascination with the Miaa as is. Tama na!
