The laying of rail tracks that will connect the Light Rail Transit (LRT) Line 1 and the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) Line 3, costing roughly P7 billion, is set to be completed by December, an update from the Light Rail Transit Authority (LRTA) showed.
The online update also said the multibillion-peso interconnection project is 99.32-percent complete. The 0.63-percent slippage “was due to the delayed implementation of west walkway at Monumento Station because of the right-of-way issue, particularly the annotation of land titles between LRTA and Intraland.” Nevertheless, the office promised to deliver the facility before the year ends.
“The land titles to be affected by the project are already segregated from the main title, and thus ready for annotation,” the agency noted. The previous administration of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo jump-started the project in May 2007.
It aims to complete the MRT Line 3 and the LRT Line 1 loop by connecting the Monumento Station of the older train system to the North Avenue Station.
Part of the larger P11-billion project is the Common Station, which is currently being contested by two property developers. The hub will connect the two railway systems with the future MRT Line 7, which will be constructed by San Miguel Corp.’s Universal LRT Corp. MRT 7 should be completed by 2017, a tentative timeline showed.
Currently, the Common Station, costing P1.4 billion in investments, is in limbo, following the Supreme Court’s injunction against the relocation of the facility from TriNoma to SM North Edsa.
The Department of Transportation and Communications in September awarded the P64.9-billion LRT 1 Cavite Extension deal to the Light Rail Manila Corp. of Metro Pacific Investments Corp. and Ayala Corp.
The group will also serve as the operator and the maintenance provider of the railway line, which will be expanded by 11.7 kilometers, through the addition of eight new stations, where approximately 10.5 km of the extension will be elevated and 1.2 km will be at-grade.
(With Jae Denise Adolfo)
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UNTV Online reported on Aug. 19, 2016 that the legal stalemate between mall giants SM Group and Ayala Group has been resolved. Sec. Arthure Tugade of DOTC helped broker the compromise deal between the two mall owners affected by the planned construction of the common station. However, the deal hasn’t been signed by all parties involved so this isn’t final yet.
After over seven years of legal tug-of-war between the two malls, this is good news nevertheless. LRT and MRT riders may soon be spared from the additional hassle of physically making a PUJ /PUB transfer from one line to the other – a convenience that should have been afforded them way back in 2010 if the DOTC under the Aquino administration hadn’t favored the Ayala Group over what is logically the most practical location to build it.
The most practical spot happened to fall on SM City North EDSA’s doorstep, which was why the original plan by experts was to build it there in the first place (see original and revised plans and PDI’s Conrado Banal III’s opinion in my preceding article titled “The Proposed LRT-MRT Grand Central Station: COMMUTERS’ DREAM TURNED INTO A NIGHTMARE”). Sad to say for SM Group and the LRT & MRT-riding public, the Aquino administration came to power so vested interests got in the way of common sense.
I guess that Sec. Tugade made the most appropriate decision in going for a compromise solution because if the SM Group insisted on what is rightfully the just resolution – it may be another seven years of legal wrangling that won’t only continue to hurt the thousands of commuters but two giants’ own business interests as well.
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