Common Station completion target set at Q2 2027

THE Department of Transportation (DoTr) said it hopes to complete the Unified Grand Central Station at North Avenue-EDSA in Quezon City by the second quarter of next year, with negotiations progressing with the Light Rail Manila Corp. (LRMC).

“Once this common station becomes operational, we are expecting 1.5 million passengers daily. We are hoping to have this finished by the second quarter of 2027,” Transportation Acting Secretary Giovanni Z. Lopez told reporters on the sidelines of Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) General Membership Meeting on Wednesday.

Last year, the DoTr issued a notice of termination to the contractors of the Unified Grand Central Station, also known as the common station for the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) and Light Rail Transit (LRT) lines and the Metro Manila Subway.

The contractors — BF Corp. and Foresight Development and Surveying Co. (BFC-FDSC) — were handed termination notices due to excessive delays.

“There was a delay here in the common station. So we have to talk to LRMC and Sumitomo Corp. to take over the construction of the common station,” Mr. Lopez said.

LRMC had submitted an unsolicited proposal to finish the terminated contract.

The DoTr is now working with the Department of Economy, Planning, and Development-Investment Coordination Committee (DEPDev-ICC) on the new costing of the project.

“We are really targeting (to finish) this by the second quarter of 2027. For the simple reason that the partial operations of MRT-7 will start by the second quarter of next year,” Mr. Lopez said, adding that the common station project is now 67.98% complete.

The BFC-FDSC consortium signed a P2.8-billion agreement with the government in 2019 for the construction of Area A of the Unified Grand Central Station project.

It was initially targeted for completion in the first quarter of 2021 and was designed to have three sections, each built separately: Area A by BFC-FDSC, Area B by Ayala Corp., and Area C by San Miguel Corp., the concessionaire for the MRT-7 project.

LRMC is a joint venture of Ayala Corp., Metro Pacific Light Rail Corp., and Macquarie Infrastructure Holdings (Philippines) Pte Ltd. Metro Pacific Light Rail is a unit of Metro Pacific Investments Corp., one of three Philippine subsidiaries of Hong Kong’s First Pacific Co. Ltd., the others being PLDT Inc. and Philex Mining Corp. — Ashley Erika O. Jose