China to fund 2 new Metro bridges

President Duterte arrives for a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in this May 15, 2017, file photo.

China has formally entered into an agreement with the Philippines to finance the construction of two state-of-the-art bridges in Metro Manila.

The two countries signed on Wednesday the Minutes of Discussion (MOD) for a full grant from China for the construction of the Binondo-Intramuros Bridge in Manila and Estrella-Pantaleon Bridge in Mandaluyong City.

The infrastructure projects are the country’s first with China under the Duterte administration.

According to Public Works Secretary Mark Villar, the grant will cover the design and construction of the bridges while the Department of Public Works and Highways will be responsible for the acquisition of the road right-of-way.

Earlier, a Chinese project team was dispatched to provide the DPWH with recommendations and technical assistance for the stages of project preparation, initiation and implementation.

In a statement, the DPWH said that based on the initial project design, the Binondo-Intramuros Bridge will be a four-lane, steel bowstring arch structure with inclined arches that will connect the Intramuros side (Solana Street and Riverside Drive) and the Binondo side (San Fernando Street) with a viaduct.

It will have a total length of 807 meters composed of a 90-meter main bridge, 488-meter Binondo approach, and 193-meter up-ramp and 166-meter down-ramp Intramuros approaches.

The Estrella-Pantelon Bridge will also have four lanes but will be a 560-meter twin spine steel box girder bridge with concrete deck slab. It will use the existing approaches in Makati and Mandaluyong City with modifications of the abutment and pier to accommodate a new bridge superstructure.

The construction of the bridges will be implemented by the DPWH Unified Project Management Office-Roads Management Cluster I.

Signatories to the MOD were Villar and Embassy of China in the Philippines Economic and Commercial Counselor Jin Yuan.

Two other proposed projects—the Panay-Guimaras-Negros Link Bridges and Davao City Expressway—will also be financed by a grant from the Chinese government.

According to a previous Inquirer report, the two bridges are expected to cost P710 million, broken down into P450 million for the Binondo-Intramuros Bridge and P260 million for the Estrella-Pantaleon Bridge. Both are expected to help decongest traffic in the metropolis.