MPIC offers anew to rehabilitate, upgrade MRT3

Infrastructure holding firm Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC) has submitted to the Duterte administration a new proposal to rehabilitate and upgrade the Metro Railway Transit Line 3.

The group is also in the middle of a due diligence for the potential acquisition of logistics provider Air21 and, through Manila Electric Co., is interested to vie for the $1-billion Masinloc power plant where a controlling stake is being bid out by AES Corp.

On MRT3, MPIC president Jose Ma. Lim said yesterday that the group had committed to double the initial investment in MRT3 to P12 billion to expand the capacity of the elevated railway running the stretch of Edsa.

Since 2011, the group has been proposing to rehabilitate MRT3 by purchasing new cars, upgrading of signaling equipment, improving the frequency of train departures and lengthening the number of cars per train.

MPIC is also part of the consortium that controls Light Rail Manila Corp. (LRMC), operator of Light Railway Transit 1.

Since the handover of LRT-1, LRMC has restored 27 light rail vehicles (LRVs), bringing the total available to 104 by end-June 2017.

LRMC served an average daily ridership of 429,915 in the first half of 2017, an improvement of 6 percent from the average daily ridership of 405,568 recorded in the same period last year. During the first half of 2017, the highest recorded daily ridership reached a record high of 536,000 from 2016’s highest of 527,000.

In a report yesterday, MPIC said LRMC was on schedule with its rail replacement project. The company has finished 87 percent of the work to replace 32-year-old tracks as of July this year. The rail replacement project covered a total of 26 kilometers of rail tracks that, when completed, will enable the reinstatement of a train running speed of 60 kilometers an hour to shorten journey times and thereby increase capacity.

On Air21, Lim said the due diligence was still ongoing.

On the $1-billion Masinloc power plant project, MPIC chair Manuel V. Pangilinan said the group was looking to participate in the bidding through Meralco.

“We have expressed interest,” he said.