San Miguel Corporation (SMC) said that it has started work on a 1.2-kilometer road that will connect the 18-km Skyway Stage 3 to the NLEX Connector project.
In a statement released on Thursday, SMC president and chief operating officer Ramon S. Ang said that the company is “working on what’s workable” in order to mitigate delays in right-of-way (ROW) acquisition for the connection.
“We’re already mobilizing our contractors to start work in areas that are unobstructed, where we’re permitted to work. We’re also already committing the funds needed to buy the ROW properties, so hopefully, these issues will be resolved the soonest,” Ang said.
The company explained that although it conducted advance work in 2014, actual work on sections 1-4 only started in 2015 because of ROW issues.
“The alignment for this connection to the NLEX connector project, which the Metro Pacific Tollways Group is building, was supposed to be built together with Section 2 of Skyway 3 in the Nagtahan to Sta. Mesa area,” Ang explained. “However, about two years since we first worked on workable areas for Skyway 3, the ROW issue in section 2 threatened to stall the project. That is why we proposed to realign Skyway 3 along the San Juan River, so that the project could be completed faster and provide a solution to traffic—not cause more of it.”
The connection, which is part of the detailed engineering design of the Skyway 3 project, can be completed within 24 months or less, as soon as the ROW issues with the landowners are resolved, according to Ang.
“To show our commitment to complete the connection, even if the main alignment was already moved to San Juan River, we signed a memorandum of agreement with the Toll Regulatory Board and Department of Public Works and Highways. We basically already committed the budget for the ROW acquisition–we will pay for it–and we will complete this section within 24 months,” Ang said.
