The operator of North Luzon Expressway said Wednesday it expects to complete the elevated highway linking MacArthur Highway in Valenzuela City to C3 Road in Caloocan City this year.
“Yes [we are on track], but remaining RoW [right of way] will need to be completed on time,” Rodrigo Franco, president and chief executive of Manila North Tollways Corp. and Metro Pacific Tollways Corp., said.
Franco said the P11.5-billion NLEx Harbor Link project was currently 17-percent completed, while RoW was 48 percent delivered to date and “should be 100-percent delivered by first half of the year.”
MNTC tapped Leighton Contractors Asia Ltd. to build the NLEx Harbor Link.
Under the contract, Leighton will construct 5.6 kilometers of elevated highway in northwest Metro Manila linking Mac Arthur Highway in Valenzuela and C3 Road in Caloocan City near the port area.
The NLEx Harbor Link Segment 10 will provide a more convenient expressway route to the Port Area in Manila. It will allow more trips for cargo trucks as they will be freed from the truck ban.
Segment 10 will also help decongest Metro Manila as it will offer motorists another alternative to NLEx, apart from Edsa/Balintawak and Mindanao Avenue. Cargo trucks, buses and commercial vehicles do not need to use Metro Manila’s congested streets to access NLEx.
Daily traffic for Segment 10 is projected to average 30,000 vehicles.
MNTC also plans to spend an additional P5 billion to extend the NLEx Harbor Link up to R10 in the Port of Manila.
MNTC completed and opened the P1.59-billion Segment 9 of the NLEx Harbor Link, a 2.42-kilometer expressway to the public in March last year.
Segment 9 connects NLEx from Smart Connect Interchange to MacArthur Highway in Karuhatan, Valenzuela City. The new road is expected to serve as many as 27,000 vehicles daily in the first year and ease traffic in major thoroughfares.
The company is also the original proponent of the P18-billion NLEx-SLEx Connector Road Project, which involves the construction of an eight-kilometer, four-lane toll road that will link the existing NLEx and SLEx, passing through Metro Manila and using the existing Philippine National Railway alignment as its route.
The board of the National Economic and Development Authority approved the Swiss Challenge for the NLEx-SLEx Connector Road Project in December 2015.
It was conditional on the proponent agreeing to a lower project internal rate of return of 10.87 percent, instead of 12.09 percent by reducing the opening tariff from P100 to P87.