No less than the chief of the transportation department’s rail transport planning division was in favor of locating the controversial common station for several light rail train (LRT) lines at SM North Edsa, contrary to the official stand of the Department of Transportation and Communications.
More importantly, DOTC’s rail transport planning chief, Joel Magbanua, had pointed out that locating the light rail common station at the Trinoma mall—across the street from the originally approved site—would open the government to additional legal action from the operator of the soon-to-be-built Metro Rail Transit line 7.
“The MRT-7 contract provides for the joint station between MRT-7 and MRT-3 at SM Annex,” he said in a March 18, 2014 memorandum to Transportation Undersecretary Rene Limcaoco. “The ‘joint station’ was changed to ‘common station’ to include LRT-1 North Extension through a decision of the [National Economic and Development Authority] board in 2009.”
“Among the material breaches defined in the MRT-7 contract is the failure of the [Republic of the Philippines or DOTC] to interconnect MRT-3 and MRT-7 to establish the joint station,” the official warned in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by the Inquirer.
Transportation Secretary Joseph Abaya has expressed his preference for the common station to be located at the Trinoma mall, which is owned by the Ayala conglomerate. He said putting up the common station in Trinoma would save the government as much as P1 billion in expenses.
Magbanua’s letter to the DOTC deputy chief countered, however, that comparing the cost of building the station in the two locations was “meaningless” because of other issues involved. “There are disbenefits like inconvenience and discomfort [to commuters] that cannot be factored in the comparison because they are difficult to quantify,” he said.
Earlier, both the DOTC and the Ayala group denied that Limcaoco was favoring the Trinoma common station proposal because he was the brother of a key executive of the Ayala group.
Magbanua’s memo also revealed that, apart from having been approved by the Neda board during the administration of former President Arroyo in 2009, the plan to build the common station at SM North Edsa was also affirmed by an alter ego of President Aquino a year into his term.
“The SM North Edsa common station was conceptualized and approved during the time of the late Secretary Leandro Mendoza and was subsequently upheld by Secretary Jose ‘Ping’ de Jesus in 2011,” Magbanua said. “In fact, it was during the tenure of Secretary De Jesus in June 2011 when the SM North Edsa common station underwent the design-build bidding process. This tendering process was stopped due to the untimely resignation of Secretary De Jesus.”
In the memo, the DOTC’s rail planning chief described the plan to locate the common station at Trinoma as “indefensible” because an estimated minimum of 55,000 commuters a day who would transfer from MRT-3 to the proposed MRT-7 would have to walk a total of 350 meters in between stations.
“This same number of passengers, plus the transferees from LRT-1, will surely criticize the government for the daily ordeal of walking 350 meters,” he said, comparing it to the difficulty of traversing the 400-meter distance between the poorly planned LRT-2 and MRT-3 interconnection system in Cubao, Quezon City. “This public outcry will haunt us for as long as we live.”