Saturday, August 26, 2017

SMC to pay extension cost of Naia Expressway to Taguig, Parañaque

DIVERSIFIED conglomerate San Miguel Corp. (SMC) will shoulder the cost of extending the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Expressway (Naiax) to Taguig and Parañaque to further cut travel time going to and from the main international gateway in the Philippines.

Public Works Secretary Mark A. Villar said his group has received a proposal from SMC to extend the portion of the Naiax along Imelda Avenue in Parañaque, and to Lawton Avenue in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig.

“We are still going through the plans, and we are working it out so that they could start hopefully this year,” he said, referring to the food-to-infrastructure conglomerate.

The plan involves the extension of the Naiax to Fort Bonifacio via Lawton Avenue, and to extend the expressway further along Imelda Avenue, he said, noting the first portion to be constructed will be the one in Taguig.

Villar, however, declined to give the cost of the project, so as not to preempt the proponent.  SMC, through Vertex Tollways Development Inc., holds the concession for the Naiax.

“There will be a down ramp on Lawton Avenue We have a project this year that aims to widen the said road. So, when we have widened Lawton, those coming from Naiax can go directly to Fort Bonifacio without exiting to Magallanes, and we are also working on the Parañaque extension, which will be along Imelda Avenue” he said.

The official did not elaborate.

Villar led Monday’s ground-breaking ceremony for the P458-million project to widen Lawton Avenue, otherwise known as Nichols Field Road. Phase 1 of the road project will cover about 1.34 kilometers of Lawton Avenue which has a total length of 3.54 kilometers that follows a part of the alignment of the old Nichols route running roughly southwest to northeast from the interchange of South Luzon Expressway and Skyway to 5th Avenue and Manila American Cemetery Memorial.

“While the construction of 2.68-lane kilometers of new concrete-cement pavement at Lawton Avenue will bring inconvenience to the traveling public, it is temporary and limited in duration which cannot outweigh the benefit of the new concrete road that ensures an economical, sound and more stable pavement structure with longer performance period,” Villar said.

The widening of Lawton Avenue, a tertiary asphalt road, is part of the big group’s traffic-decongestion efforts by widening existing road network to improve road capacity.

The widening of Lawton Avenue will also complement the Bonifacio Global City-Ortigas Center Link Road Project, a priority project over Pasig River that will increase the road-network capacity in Metro Manila which was formally started in July.

The 961.427-lineal meter Bonifacio Global City-Ortigas Center Link Road Project involves the construction of a four-lane Santa Monica to Lawton Bridge across Pasig River connecting Lawton Avenue in Makati City and Santa Monica Street in Pasig City and a viaduct structure traversing Lawton Avenue onwards to the entrance of Bonifacio Global City.

Once completed by March 2020, traveling between the central business districts of the cities of Taguig and Pasig will only take 12 minutes and traffic congestion along Edsa and C5 Road, particularly along Guadalupe Bridge and Bagong Ilog Bridge, will be alleviated by about 25 percent.

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