The Department of Transportation (DOTr) on Monday said construction of the Metro Manila Subway Project (MMSP) will start next month.
“Once we put down the tunnel boring machines, the actual construction of the [MMSP] will start in the first week of June,” Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade said in a forum.
Construction of the MMSP’s partial operability section from Valenzuela to North Ave. is in full swing, and the project’s first two (out of 25) tunnel boring machines arrived in 2021.
The agency expects the partial operability of the subway project between 2025 and 2026.
Tugade gave assurance assured that the project would continue under the new administration as funds were already in place.
The government has secured a total of 848 billion yen (P376.6 billion) from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to fund the project.
Tugade added that most of the contracts for the project have already awarded and the right of way acquisition started.
The proposal for a subway in Metro Manila was first developed in 1973 under the Urban Transport Study in the Manila Metropolitan Area.
When Tugade took over the helm of the DOTr in July 2016, the MMSP project did not have a complete feasibility study, did not have the NEDA board investment approval, did not have any financing, and did not have a single awarded contract.
The MMSP was approved by the NEDA board in September 2017, its first tranche loan was signed in March 2018 and its first contract was awarded in November 2018.
The 33-kilometer subway, dubbed as the “project of the century” stretches from Valenzuela in the north to NAIA Terminal Terminal 3 and the Food Terminal Inc. (FTI) in the south.
The project is expected to reduce travel time between Quezon City and NAIA from one hour and 30 minutes to just 35 minutes. It is expected to serve around 370,000 passengers a day in its first year of full operations, with capacity to serve up to one million passengers a day in later years.
The MMSP is physically interconnected and inter-operable with the North-South Commuter Railway System’s (NSCR) south segment, enabling passengers to board the subway train, for example, in North Ave. Station of MMSP and get off at the Calamba Station of NSCR.
