CITY OF MALOLOS– The expected heavy Christmas traffic in Metro Manila may be eased with the scheduled opening in December of the P10.5 billion North Luzon Expressway Harbor Link Segment 10.
The North Luzon Expressway Harbor Link Segment 10 provides an alternative route between the Port of Manila and north Luzon provinces.
“It will be passable by Christmas time. It will be this administration and the Metro Pacific Tollways Corporation’s (MPTC) Christmas gift to our people as we target to deliver it in time for (holidays),” said Public Works Secretary Mark Villar on Friday (Oct. 19).
Segment 10 is an elevated road built along the NLEx to connect Valenzuela City to Caloocan City, in order to ease Manila road congestion that has been blamed on cargo trucks and other haulers. NLEx is owned and operated by a subsidiary of MPTC.
Villar said work on Segment 10 is now 90 percent complete. Once opened, it will take in 30,000 cargo trucks that normally traverse through Edsa and other north-bound roads of Metro Manila, he said. Harbor Link Segment 10 would also cut the travel time between the Port of Manila and NLEx from 1 hour to just 10 minutes.
Villar attended a briefing where officials from the MPTC and NLEX officials reported the acquisition of right-of-way properties, which would allow work to start on the undeveloped portions of Segment 10.
More than 2,000 households were relocated to government housing sites in the Bulacan towns of Pandi and Norzagaray, and a resettlement site in Caloocan City, said Nemesio Castillo, NLEx Corp. vice president. /muf