Gov’t to bid out LRT-1 maintenance contract

The government will bid out the contract for the maintenance of the Light Rail Transit Line 1, a published notice on Friday showed.

The one-year contract, valued at P423.24 million, is for the existing LRT-1—a 20.7-kilometer elevated railway that serves about half a million people daily.

The bid submission deadline has been set on Aug. 13, the Light Rail Transit Authority announced.

Maintenance work on the railway, one of the oldest in the country, was part of the recent LRT-1 public-private partnership deal, which would soon be awarded to the consortium of Metro Pacific Investments Corp. and Ayala Corp.

But the contract to be auctioned off is only for a year, and its expiration may coincide with the formal turnover of operations to the private sector next year, a government spokesman said.

Based on the notice, the auction will be conducted through open and competitive bidding process using so-called non-discretionary “pass/fail” criterion. These are specified in the revised implementing rules and regulations of Republic Act No. 9184.

Filipino citizens, sole proprietorships, partnerships, or organizations with at least 60 percent of its outstanding capital stock owned by Filipinos are the only ones allowed to bid for the contract.

The LRTA has also set a pre-bid conference for interested groups on July 16.

LRT-1 served a total of 171.8 million passengers last year, generating P2.52 billion in revenues.

The P65-billion LRT-1 PPP deal will extend the existing rail line to Bacoor, Cavite. The expansion project, to be completed by 2020, is expected to boost daily ridership to over 800,000, the Transportation department earlier said.

LRT-1 is considered to be the first light rail transit system in Southeast Asia, information on its website showed.