Metro Pacific Investments Corp. is pushing for a single common station that will link Metro Manila’s overhead train system in Quezon City. 

“We endorsed that idea, it’s an excellent idea on the part of DoTC [Department of Transportation and Communications]. We’ve always advocated that, of course at the end its up to the other group to decide,” MPIC chairman Manuel Pangilinan said.

Pangilinan said a single common station that would linking Light Rail Transit  Line 1, Metro Rail Transit Line 3 and the planned MRT7 would be more efficient and convenient to commuters. 

He proposed the location of the common station in the middle of the SM and Trinoma malls. 

The Transportation Department under the Aquino administration had proposed to build two common stations, one near SM North Edsa and the other beside Trinoma Mall, owned by Ayala Land Inc.

The agency’s strategy of building two common stations aims to resolve a conflict with the SM Group.

SM Prime Holdings Inc. earlier secured a Supreme Court stay order, barring the department from transferring the location of the common station to the Trinoma Mall.

The Transportation Department decided to relocate the common station to Trinoma from SM North, citing P1 billion worth of savings the government would realize from the transfer.

Under an earlier agreement between SM Prime and state-run Light Rail Transit Authority, the common station would be situated beside SM North Edsa. SM Prime already paid the government P200 million for the naming rights of the proposed station.

MPIC and Ayala Corp. lead the Light Rail Manila Consortium, which won the contract for the LRT 1 Cavite extension project, including the design of the common station. 

LRMC earlier proposed to Transportation the construction of an interim station between SM City North Edsa and Trinoma to connect the existing LRT1, MRT3 and the planned MRT7. 

“The idea is to have just one station that will be ideal for us and for everyone because all the lines will just meet in that station. It has to be within that triangle of Trinoma and SM,” MPIC president and chief executive Jose Ma. Lim said.

Lim said if the proposed interim station concept became acceptable, it could later become a part of the permanent station.