DoTC says 2 elevated toll roads can coexist

Competing proposals to build a toll road cutting through Metro Manila may be able to coexist with each other, a senior member of the Aquino Cabinet said.

Reacting to the ongoing feud between Manuel V. Pangilinan’s Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. and San Miguel Corp.-backed Citra Metro Manila Tollways Corp. (CMMTC), Transportation Secretary Manuel Roxas II said both firms need not be at each other’s necks.

Both firms have their own proposals for the construction of a highway linking the Metro Manila Skyway and the North Luzon Expressway (NLEx). Both MPTC and CMMTC argued that their respective proposals were better than their rivals’.

“These two competing projects are really being assessed by the DPWH [Department of Public Works and Highways],” Roxas said in a briefing Monday.

“If possible, why not approve both,” Roxas said.

CMMTC insisted that its proposal, which it submitted earlier to the Toll Regulatory Board (TRB), was superior to MPTC’s.

CMMTC’s offer involves the extension of the Metro Manila Skyway from Buendia to Balintawak in Quezon City, near the entrance to the NLEx. The road would have as much as eight interchanges, allowing motorists to use the highway to easily travel between several points in the Metro while bypassing traffic.

For its part MPTC’s proposed alignment for the similar road, from the Skyway in Buendia to Manila’s Port District in Tondo, has been adjudged superior by a study of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Under MPTC’s offer, the so-called “connector road” would pass over the Philippine National Railways (PNR) tracks to end in Tondo, where the company plans to build a separate “Harbor Link Road” that goes to NLEx.

Roxas said that since the proposed roads pass through different alignments and since CMMTC targets traffic within the city while MPTC targets people wanting to bypass the metropolis, both could actually co-exist.

Neither MPTC nor CMMTC officials could be reached for comment.