The Department of Transportation (DoTr) announced that the first phase of the Light Rail Transit Line 1 (LRT-1) Cavite extension, which will carry an additional 80,000 passengers daily, will be opened this month.
“Maybe November 16, we are fixing it,” Transportation Secretary Jaime J. Bautista told reporters on Thursday. “One way or another [it will help decongest] once we open the LRT-1 extension,” he added.
Light Rail Manila Corp. (LRMC), the private operator of LRT-1, confirmed this, saying that the first phase of the extension adds a total of 6.2 kilometers from Pasay City to Parañaque City. The five new stations are Redemptorist–Aseana Station, MIA Road Station, PITX Station, Ninoy Aquino Avenue Station, and Dr. Santos (formerly Sucat) Station.
The first phase will reduce the travel time from Quezon City to Parañaque City to less than an hour.
In a press conference in Malacañang, Enrico R. Benipayo, newly appointed president and chief executive officer of LRMC, said the fares for the entire LRT-1 line – from FPJ Station (formerly Roosevelt) in Quezon City to Baclaran Station in Pasay. , including the last station of Cavite extension Phase 1 – will be P45.
With the addition of five new stations, Mr. Benipayo said the current interval of four minutes between trains will be maintained.
He said LRMC expects to double its current ridership in the next five years. The average daily ridership of the LRT-1 now stands at 323,000.
“We expect that once we open this one, we will be able to accommodate 80,000 more passengers. We expect after five years, we will have doubled the number of daily passengers, so by 2028 we have reached about 650,000 daily average passengers,” he said.
The next phases, such as Phase 2 and Phase 3, are still being prepared as these will be financed through public-private partnerships, said Mr. Bautista.
“We are working with LRMC. We are just looking at how we can solve other problems, especially the right of way. Within the next year, we should be able to finalize the schedule,” said Mr. Bautista, added that the DoTr will try to deal with all the problems within this administration.
To recall, in August the DoTr said that the second and third phases of the construction of the LRT-1 Cavite extension may start in 2026 amid problems in obtaining the right materials.
LRMC is a joint venture of Ayala Corp., Metro Pacific Light Rail Corp., and Macquarie Infrastructure Holdings (Philippines) Pte. Ltd. Metro Pacific Light Rail is a unit of Metro Pacific Investments Corp., one of the Philippine subsidiaries of First Pacific Co. Ltd. of Hong Kong, others in PLDT Inc. and Philex Mining Corp.
Hastings Holdings, Inc., a PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund unit of MediaQuest Holdings, Inc., maintains an interest in the PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund. BusinessWorld through the Philippine Star Group, which controls. – Ashley Erika O. Jose
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