One of the projects that many people yearn for in President Duterte’s Administration is the Metro Manila Subway. This project aims to protrude the railway system to be able to accommodate more people who wants to have access to trains.
The actual start of the construction of the Metro Manila Subway started February of this year. In addition to that, the construction of the project will create more and better opportunities for senior citizens of Makati City.
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If most of you were not aware, it’ll be the first kind in the country. This is why the construction left some of the people in charge perplexed. Good news, though! Because a few parts of the tunnel boring machine which will be the main tool to start the construction arrived in the Philippines yesterday!
What does this mean?
Basically, this means that the time has come that the construction starts. More so, it’s some sort of an indication that the Metro Manila Subway project is slowly becoming a reality.
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Goddess Hope Libiran, the Department of Transportation (DOTr) Assistant Secretary for Communications said that the parts of the machine came earlier than the time it was brought to the media. For instance, the head of the tunnel boring machine arrived earlier on the 28th of March 2019 in the port of Batangas.
Tunneling in between stations with the use of TBM (tunnel boring machine) will start by the second quarter of next year. The digging and excavation for stations will start 4th quarter of this year.”
As you can see, Libiran said that the real work, which is the creating of tunnels in between stations would start next year. However, the planning, excavations for stations, and the digging would start later this year.
After the station boxes are excavated, the TBM will be lowered into the station box so that it can proceed with the boring/tunneling between station boxes.”
Where did the tunnel boring machine come from?
There are not a lot of companies who offer machinery like this—our country is lucky. Why? Because the one who will be providing the tunnel boring machine is Hitachi Zosen Sakai Works, a Japanese manufacturing firm and is a known supplier worldwide.
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What they will be providing is a tunnel boring machine, which is 6.9-meter diameter with a weight of over 600 tons. This will be one of the main things that will be used for the Metro Manila Subway construction.
Arthur Tugade, DOTr Secretary said that the entire project will be requiring some five (5) million cubic meters of soil; that is equivalent to 2,500 Olympic sized pools—a lot of digging will take place, for sure.
To give you a brief refresher, the Metro Manila Subway will bear a total of fifteen (15) stations which will route to different cities in the Metro like Quezon City, Quirino Highway, Pasay City, FTI in Taguig City, until the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3.
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And as we have mentioned earlier, once operations are full-blown, the subway will be able to accommodate, on a daily basis, a total of 370,000 passengers daily in its first year—having a design and the ability to be able to serve passengers of up to 1.5 million every single day.
This will be a good additive to the current public transportation system that our country has. Although partial operations will take place until 2022 and to kick start full operations in the year 2025, it will, of course, have dry runs to try out the new transportation system.
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We do hope that the Metro Manila Subway system is one of the best resolutions that our government came up with that would solve the traffic problem in our country, specifically in the Metro. The legitimate construction is being started now and everyone is banking on it to solve the nuisance in Philippine traffic.