AN outstanding example is the Toll Regulatory Board’s (TRB) incredible objection to what looks like a very sensible infrastructure project meant to significantly ease the nightmarish gridlocks in Metro Manila.
The TRB, headed by Executive Director Edmundo T. Reyes, has been consistently blocking the award of an unsolicited build-operate-transfer (BOT) project proposal that promises to ease by at least 20 percent the traffic congestion in Metro Manila. The TRB, by the way, is directly under the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC).
Metro Pacific Tollways Development Corp. (MPTDC), the proponent of the project as early as 2010, proposed to the then-newly installed Aquino administration a 13-kilometer elevated highway that would link the North Luzon Expressway (Nlex) and South Luzon Expressway (Slex). If constructed, this elevated highway would allow thousands of trucks and lighter vehicles to “leap” over Metro Manila’s ground-level traffic.
The beauty of the proposal is that it would allow commercial producers in northern and southern Luzon to cross over without contributing to the congestion in Metro Manila.
As proposed by MPTDC, the elevated highway would be constructed above the railroad line of the Philippine National Railways. This means no right-of-way problems to contend with, allowing the road’s untrammeled construction.
As I have earlier pointed out, the TRB has put the project on hold for four years—on the back burner, so to speak—for no justifiable reason.
In fact, to some people, this deliberate inaction of the TRB (which, apparently, has the blessings of the DOTC) is one way of sabotaging the project.
Feud over connector-road projects?
A BUSINESSMAN has told me in confidence that from the very start, the DOTC and TRB have been feuding with the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) over how best to carry out President Aquino’s directive to “facilitate the implementation of two connector-road projects—the San Miguel Corp./Citra’s Skyway Stage 3 [project] and MPTDC’s Nlex-Slex project.”
The TRB has been criticizing the DPWH for not leaving the integrated planning of the country’s highways to the DOTC.
According to a DPWH official, however, the department, as the engineering arm of the government, is only following the President’s orders to implement both connector-road projects, and to see to it that the two contractors should split the construction costs for the common area of the toll-road projects.
The two projects have a common alignment and, in the public interest, the DPWH wants to make sure that they would not have overlapping facilities.
The DOTC-TRB side, however, is questioning the DPWH’s authority to issue a toll-concession agreement for the Nlex-Slex project. The objection does not make sense, since the DPWH’s mandate is grounded on the BOT law or Executive Order 686.
Effectively, the common-alignment issue has been settled. So far, the DOTC and TRB have given a concession to the San Miguel/Citra Skyway Stage 3 project. But they have not stopped questioning the legality of the project.
At the rate the project is being stalled, the MPTDC project would be stalled for another year, at the very least.
This project was originally scheduled to be completed before the Asia Pacific Economic Conference, to be held in the country next year. But don’t hold your breath, judging from the way the DOTC and TRB have been dragging their feet on this one.
The businessman who said there’s a feud going on between “high personages” of the DPWH and the DOTC has also revealed that “powerful lobbyists from the business sector” seem bent on pitting both departments against each other.
The net effect: It is sabotaging what is otherwise a meritorious and badly-needed infrastructure project.
In the meantime, what is there to expect under the Aquino administration? Monstrous traffic jams that become bigger and uglier by the day.
E-mail: omerta_bdc@yahoo.com.
Image credits: jimbo Albano