THE DUTERTE GOVERNMENT will likely uphold its predecessor’s decision to build two “common” stations that will link three railway systems converging on Quezon City in order to honor a compromise made with the rival proponents concerned, the country’s socioeconomic planning chief said.
 
Asked on the newly installed government’s stand on building a common station that will link the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) line 3, Light Rail Transit line 1 and the planned MRT-7, National Economic and Development Authority Director-General Ernesto M. Pernia said it will likely keep the plan to build two stations: one in front of SM City North EDSA mall and the other in front of TriNoma mall.
 
“I think the decision is to have two separate ones,” Mr. Pernia told reporters on the sidelines of a press briefing of the Development Budget Coordination Committee last Tuesday.
 
“That’s not optimal, actually. That’s sub-optimal, a compromise,” he admitted.
 
“But if that has been decided by the previous administration, probably we will adopt because it has been committed to SM and Ayala. It’s hard to retract it.”
 
President Rodrigo R. Duterte dedicated much of his June 30 inaugural speech addressing business concerns, among others by ordering agencies to refrain from “changing or bending” rules and contracts, especially those involving projects that had already been approved by the previous administration.
 
The common station project for Metro Manila’s elevated railways hit a major obstacle after the Transportation department decided in 2013 to transfer the site of the common station in front of Ayala-owned TriNoma mall. SM Prime Holdings, Inc. sued the government for breach of contract as it had signed a deal with the Light Rail Transit Authority in September 2009 for the common station to be built in front of SM mall, along with a P200-million payment to secure naming rights for the facility. It secured in July 2014 a Supreme Court stay order stopping the transfer of the common station’s site to TriNoma. In May, the high court refused the government’s plea to lift the stay order.
 
Once operational, the common station will enable passengers of the MRT-3, which runs from North Avenue, Quezon City to Taft Avenue in Pasay, to transfer to trains of the LRT-1 which plies the route from Roosevelt-Muñoz, Quezon City to Baclaran in Pasay, and the planned MRT-7 that will stretch all the way to San Jose Del Monte in Bulacan through Commonwealth Avenue.
 
MRT 7 is a P69.3-billion project being built by San Miguel Corp. units via build-gradual transfer-operate and maintain scheme under the government’s public-private partnership (PPP) infrastructure program.
 
Former Transportation secretary Francis Emilio A. Abaya had argued that placing the common station in front of the Ayala mall would be more “convenient” for passengers and could be built faster than if it were located in front of the SM mall.
 
Both SM Prime and the Ayala group have said they are “open” to the idea of building two stations, the details of which are still being discussed by the parties.
 
Mr. Pernia also said last Tuesday that the Duterte government is looking to offer to investors 17 PPP projects by end-2017.
 
He added that the P122.8-billion Laguna Lakeshore expressway dike project — the second-biggest PPP project, so far, after the P170.7-billion North-South Railway South Line Project — will be reviewed for “geologic and technical” issues before being offered again after its auction failed in March.
 
Contracts for 12 PPP projects cumulatively worth P217.4 billion have been awarded since the third quarter of 2010 shortly after the previous administration took office.