Poe vows ‘super bridge’ to Mindoro

Presidential candidate Senator Grace Poe     EDWIN BACASMAS

CITY OF CALAPAN—Courting votes in the two provinces comprising Mindoro Island, Sen. Grace Poe promised to build a bridge linking the island and Batangas City in Southern Luzon.

In a sortie in this Oriental Mindoro capital on Monday, Poe said her administration, in its first two months, would pursue the construction of a “super bridge” that would solve the woes of ferry travel.

Building the bridge, she said, would also create jobs and hasten trade and transport of products.

Calapan is around an hour and 30 minutes away from the Batangas City port via fast ferry service and at least three hours via a roll-on roll-off (RoRo) vessel.

Poe said Mindoro was close to her because residents here supported her late adoptive father, actor Fernando Poe Jr., who ran and lost for president in 2004.

A proposed Batangas-Mindoro bridge is actually already on the list of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), to be built under the  under a private-public partnership (PPP) framework.

Gateway to the south

Spanning 15 kilometers (km), the bridge will cover the 8.5-km distance between Mindoro and Verde Island and another 6.5-km stretch that will run between Verde Island and Batangas, over a 10- to 300-meter water depth, the DPWH said.  It will have two or four lanes, with an optional pedestrian or bicycle lane.

The bridge, the DPWH said, would “maximize the current position of Mindoro island as  ‘Luzon’s Gateway to the South’ to the island provinces of the Visayas and Mindanao through opening roads to faster and efficient transport of goods and people along the existing Nautical Highway.”

The “super bridge” had been proposed by reelectionist Oriental Mindoro Gov. Alfonso Umali Jr., a member of the Liberal Party in 2015.

The National Economic and Development Authority had included the proposed Mindoro-Batangas Super Bridge on the list of the government’s priority projects.