Richmond Mercurio – The Philippine Star
April 19, 2022 | 12:00am
The partial opening of the Metro Manila Subway project has been moved to 2025 due to challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade announced last week.
Tugade said the partial operability of the country’s first subway system is targeted by 2025, with full operation eyed by 2027.
“If there’s no pandemic, what we have completed is already substantial to have partial operability,” Tugade said.
“The landscape formatting has been made so that by 2027, the full operations of the first Metro Manila subway will commence,” he added.
Lowering of the project’s first tunnel boring machine and a test run at its Valenzuela depot will start by next month.
Funded by the Japanese government, the P488-billion subway will run from Valenzuela City to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3 in Pasay.
It will reduce travel time between Quezon City and NAIA from one hour and 10 minutes to 35 minutes only.
Once operational, the subway can accommodate up to 370,000 passengers per day in its first year of operations.