Cebu’s P30-B CCLEx nearly 50% complete

The P30-billion Cebu-Cordova Link Expressway (CCLEx), a major infrastructure project that aims to ease congestion in the country’s second-busiest urban center, is halfway finished.Infrastructure giant Metro Pacific Investments Corp., the firm behind the CCLEx toll bridge, announced on Thursday that overall project progress stood at 49.85 percent and full completion was expected by August 2021.

Metro Pacific, through project company Cebu Cordova Link Expressway Corp., said the substructure of the 8.5-kilometer CCLEx had been completed.

“The Cebu-Cordova Link Expressway is our first huge infrastructure investment in the Visayas, and we intend to expand and strengthen our presence here,” Jose Ma. Lim, Metro Pacific president and CEO, said on Thursday.

Lim led the inspection of CCLEx alongside top private and public officials, including Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella and Cordova Mayor Mary Therese Sitoy-Cho.

The CCLEx will be the province’s third bridge linking the main Cebu island with Mactan Island, where the international airport is located.

The toll bridge starts in the Cebu South Coastal Road and ends in Barangay Pilipog, Cordova, in Mactan Island.It will have two lanes in each direction that will serve an estimated 50,000 vehicles daily, easing traffic in the existing Marcelo Fernan Bridge and the Mandaue-Mactan Bridge.

Rodrigo Franco, president and CEO of Metro Pacific subsidiary Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. (MPTC), said CCLEx was the company’s largest project in terms of cost.

“CCLEx is already an iconic structure. It will feature a cross that will be luminous on four sides at night, as the cross highlights Cebu’s distinct role as the cradle of Christianity in the Philippines,” he said.

CCLEx started civil works on July 5, 2018.

It has a design speed of 80 km per hour and a height of 51 meters to allow large vessels to pass underneath the bridge.

Metro Pacific has assembled a team of international and local companies to build the CCLEx. These include Spanish company Acciona Construccion SA and Filipino firms First Balfour and DM Consunji Inc.

MPTC is the largest toll road concessionaire and operator in the Philippines. It operates the 84-km North Luzon Expressway, 94-km Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway and the 14-km Cavite Expressway. MPTC also has two other toll concessions currently under construction, namely the 45-km Cavite-Laguna Expressway and the 8-km NLEX-South Luzon Expressway Connector Road. It has now expanded its business in other Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.