RP’s longest tollway ready by November 2007 – BCDA

CLARK FIELD, Pampanga — By November next year, this landlocked province is sure to have access to the beaches of Subic, Zambales within 30 minutes at a maximum 100 kilometers per hour of travel via the new 50.5-kilometer tollway now being rushed.

At a press briefing here yesterday, Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA) president Narciso Abaya assured Central Luzon folk that despite a 6.7 percent "slippage" or delay, the P21-billion Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway Project (SCTEP) will "surely be finished."

Once completed, the 93.7-kilometer expressway would be the longest tollway in the country.

The SCTEP could accommodate as many as 200,000 vehicles at any given time, Abaya said.

A maximum weight of 13.5 tons per axle and a speed limit of 100 kilometers per hour will be imposed along the tollway, he added.

Abaya said the 50.5-kilometer package 1 of the SCTEP from the Subic Freeport to Clark will be completed in November next year, while the 43.2-kilometer package 2 from Clark to the Luisita economic zone in Tarlac City will be finished even earlier in August.

When finished, the tollway between Clark and Subic will shorten travel between the two areas to only 30 minutes, instead of one and a half hours via the existing old highway that passes through several towns in Pampanga and Bataan.

"Regardless of intervening factors, we expect the civil works for the two packages to be completed at a cost of P20.969 billion, which is below the ceiling of P21 billion," Abaya said.

This, despite the 6.7 percent slippage in the construction, which he blamed on the typhoons that stalled the project last August, as well as some problems the Japanese contractor had encountered with some sub-contractors and right-of-way concerns, particularly in Mabalacat, Pampanga.

He said the BCDA is still waiting for the decision of the Angeles City court on the expropriation proceedings on a property for a spur road in Mabalacat whose valuation was increased by the provincial government from P1,000 to P10,000 per square meter.   

Abaya said the BCDA has spent some P500 million as compensation for property owners affected by the tollway project. Initially, the BCDA estimated that right-of-way cost would reach P800 billion.

The BCDA said the SCTEP is 53 percent complete, based on the contractor’s report that road works are 41 percent finished, interchanges, 28 percent, and underpasses, 70 percent.

Of the 49 underpasses, 27 have been completed, Abaya said.

He said work on the 43 bridges along the stretch of the SCTEP is on schedule. The major ones include the 1.16-kilometer Sacobia-Bamban River bridge which is 55 meters above the riverbed, the 720-meter bridge across the Pasig-Potrero River, the 400-meter bridge across the Porac River, and the 381-meter bridge across the Gumain River. — Ding Cervantes