The Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) said a bus hub public-private partnership project in Taguig would be operational by 2018 after it formally declared builder Ayala Land Inc. (ALI) the winner.
The announcement came after ALI emerged in August as the best bidder of the deal, known as the P4-billion Integrated Transport System-South project (ITS-South), after beating its only other rival, Filinvest Land Inc. ALI offered that it be paid P277.89 million annually to undertake the project, while Filinvest Land offered P1 billion as its payment per year.
Construction is set to commence in August 2016 and will be completed in 18 months, or January 2018. The terminal’s operations will be in full swing by February 2018.
“This is the second ITS project that we have awarded. Our goal here is to give passengers coming from the south seamless transfers to other modes of transportation, as well as help decongest traffic in the metro,” DOTC chief Joseph Emilio Abaya said on Monday.
The first ITS project known as the ITS-Southwest, which would be built near the Manila Cavite Expressway, was bagged this year by a consortium led by Megawide Construction Corp. and Henry Sy’s Walter Mart Group.
The ITS projects were designed to create intermodal hubs where provincial buses would disembark passengers to transfer to other in-city modes of transport such as elevated railways, city buses and UV Express vans. The move was also aimed at easing congestion within Metro Manila.
The site of the ITS-South project is right next to ARCA South, where ALI is developing an integrated mixed-use estate.
ALI would be responsible for the design and construction of the new terminal, which would be situated in a 5.57-hectare land along the FTI Compound. This project would connect passengers traveling from neighboring provinces such as Laguna and Batangas to other modes of transport including buses, taxis and jeepneys.
The private concessionaire would operate and maintain the terminal for a period of 35 years.
ALI earlier estimated up to 4,000 buses and 160,000 passengers would be passing through ITS-South from South Luzon Expressway daily.
The ITS-South project was the 11th PPP deal to be awarded by the Aquino administration in the last five years.
The others were: ITS-Southwest, Muntinlupa Cavite Expressway (formerly DaangHari-Slex Link Road), PPP for school infrastructure project (Phase 1), Naia Expressway Project, PPP for school infrastructure project (Phase II), Modernization of the Philippine Orthopedic Center, Automatic Fare Collection System, Mactan-Cebu International Airport, the LRT-1 Cavite Extension, and the Cavite Laguna Expressway.