Zamora offers to build $1.5-B LRT4

Architectural concept of a tropically inspired Light Rail Transit or LRT station represented by pitched roofs, visual porosity, and communal shade as an articulation of the contemporary Filipino landmark identity.

Map of Station Location

Proposed Connection of the MRT Line 3 and SW4 Station

Businessman Salvador B. Zamora II wants to again invest in railways, this time with an offer to build and operate the $1.5 billion Light Rail Transit Line 4 in Metro Manila.

The proposed 20-kilometer line, which would link densely populated areas in Taytay, Rizal and the Ortigas Business District, would be Zamora’s newest foray into railway sector after he sold his interest in Metro Rail Transit Line 7 to San Miguel Corp. last year.

“We are preparing the papers,” Zamora said in a recent interview, saying he had initial talks with the Department of Transportation.

This approach is called an unsolicited proposal which, if accepted, would require a competitive bidding or Swiss challenge.

Under a Swiss challenge, rival bidders will be allowed to submit better offers, but the original proponent will be given the chance to match those terms and win the project.

Zamora said he was also exploring another option, given recent statements by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez to require certain businesses, including public transportation companies, to secure a congressional franchise to operate.

“It might be easier to go with a franchise, you are protected by the law,” Zamora noted.

The private sector sees big opportunities in railways, given their massive commercial potential, apart from their role in cutting congestion that continues to plague Metro Manila.

Apart from SMC’s involvement in MRT-7, a consortium led by Ayala Corp. and Metro Pacific Investments Corp. operates the LRT-1. Metro Pacific also recently revived an offer to rehabilitate and operate the troubled MRT-3 project along EDSA.

An LRT-4 project used to be part of the Public-Private Partnership program under the Aquino III administration.

It was approved by the board of the National Economic and Development Authority in 2015. That approval was good for only six months and it lapsed in early 2016.

Based on a project brief dated November 2015, the LRT-4 was hoped to address limited transportation options for residents in Taytay and nearby areas.

“Ortigas Avenue is highly congested; with over 4,000 public transport passengers every hour and travel speeds during peak hour of around 12 kilometers/hour—much lower than the average for Metro Manila,” according to the brief prepared by the then Department of Transportation and Communications.

The department said most districts had more than 100,000, with some areas topping 200,000. The Taytay area was also growing at least 3 percent yearly.

It added that the LRT-4 PPP would have a 34-year concession period.


Read more: http://business.inquirer.net/239064/zamora-offers-build-1-5-b-lrt4#ixzz4wJQkFaP1
Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

DOTr sues Abaya for MRT-3 woes

The Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTr) has filed graft charges against former Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya for the perennial poor services of the Metro Rail Transit - 3 (MRT-3).

DOTr's Legal Affairs and Procurement Division filed the 29-page complaint at the Ombudsman on Monday.

The department cited that in 2016 alone, the MRT-3 encountered a total of 649 service interruptions in which passengers were made to alight from the trains.

The complaint also said, MRT's maintenance service provider, Busan Universal Rail Incorporated (BURI), is not just a newly-found corporation that lacked the required years of experience, but more importantly, it had not joined the bidding at all.

Included as respondents are four former transportation officials, six ex-members of the department's Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) and 10 officers and staff of BURI.

Committee on Public Services (February 13, 2017)

Dialogue works

After a decade, a common station that will link three railways in Metro Manila is finally pushing through. Ending years of controversy, the government broke ground for the project last Friday, with officials of all private-sector stakeholders as witnesses.

The project was planned in 2007. In September 2009, the state-run Light Rail Transit Authority (LRTA) accepted P200 million from SM Prime Holdings Inc. as goodwill money in exchange for locating the common station beside SM City North Edsa and naming rights to it.

That deal was finalized when Leandro Mendoza, since deceased, was secretary of transportation and communications.

In April 2014, then Transportation and Communications Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya decided to include the common station in the bidding for the P65-billion extension of LRT Line 1. It was won by the consortium of businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan’s Metro Pacific Investments Corp. and Ayala Corp., whose Trinoma mall is in front of SM City North Edsa and is the last stop of the MRT3 line.

Abaya insisted then that a common station near Trinoma would save the government P1 billion. This prompted SMPHI to sue the government for breach of the 2009 agreement on the common station being located near SM City North Edsa.

In August 2014, the Supreme Court stopped the DOTC and the LRTA from transferring the location of the common station to Trinoma.

Given the importance of the project, Abaya pushed for a compromise and even suggested two small common stations — one each in SM City North Edsa and in Trinoma. The decision on the project hung for the remainder of the Aquino administration.

When President Duterte appointed Arthur Tugade as transportation chief last year, one of his first official promises was to solve the impasse on the common station within his first 100 days in office. And this he did, brokering a compromise to locate the common station between the competing malls.

On Sept. 28, 2016, Tugade called all private stakeholders to dialogue to come up with a solution to the common station problem. Last Jan. 18, a memorandum of agreement was signed among the private stakeholders, the Department of Transportation, and the LRTA outlining the design parameters for a new P2.8-billion common station at the new location.

The delay had jacked up the cost to P2.8 billion from the P2.6 billion estimated in 2009, although the government said the higher price was due to the fact that the station would be bigger or, as Tugade had explained, the new location has an area of 13,700 square meters with almost double the capacity of the original 2009 design.

A major lesson to be learned in this unfortunate episode is that dialogue is key to solving the problem. The penchant of complaining parties or losing companies to hale their competitors to court has never resulted in a win-win situation. It has only delayed many vital projects and caused heavy losses to them and the public that their projects were supposed to serve.

The DOTr should be commended for being able to bring together SM’s Tessie Sy and Hans Sy, Ayala Corp.’s Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, San Miguel Corp. big boss Ramon Ang, and Metro Pacific’s Pangilinan to the table and discuss what could be done to proceed with the common railway station. With the resolution, construction of MRT7 along Commonwealth Avenue to Bulacan by SMC’s unit Universal LRT Corp., which bagged the 25-year concession agreement for the railway line on June 18, 2008, can now also go full blast.

The common station that will connect MRT7, MRT3, and LRT1 will provide a common concourse where train commuters can conveniently transfer from one line to another.

What remains to be done now — and these could be the potential bottlenecks that could delay the project moving forward — would be the right-of-way delivery by the government and how SM and Ayala would go about naming the common station given the fact that both now have naming rights to the project.

If it is delivered on time, commuters in Metro Manila will finally enjoy the convenience of a common station by early 2020.

https://opinion.inquirer.net/107577/dialogue-works