There’s good news for those who regularly use the North Luzon Expressway (Nlex) to get to destinations in Central and Northern Luzon. We’re talking about the plan of the Manila North Tollways Corp. (MNTC), the Nlex concessionaire, to build 64 new lanes in Bulacan and Pampanga.
The P2.6-billion new expressway lanes project will no doubt improve travel convenience and promote economic growth in the Central Luzon region and beyond.
Once completed, road capacity of the Nlex stretch from Santa Rita in Bulacan to San Fernando in Pampanga will be expanded from the existing 2×2 lanes to 3×3 lanes in each direction, allowing motorists faster, more seamless travel.
The road-expansion project will also include the construction of new expressway lanes on both sides of the 5-kilometer-long Candaba Viaduct, which was built in the 1970s.
MNTC has already completed a new 2×2, 4-km expressway in the Mabalacat City portion of the Nlex, which includes two new bridges. This project, completed in October last year, will segregate northbound and southbound traffic, thus promoting road safety.
MNTC is now awaiting government approval, via the Toll Regulatory Board (TRB), before the new expressway lanes are opened to the motoring public.
For MNTC President and CEO Rodrigo Franco, the new expressway projects are consistent with the company’s support for the government thrust to spur socioeconomic growth with road projects that facilitate more efficient and faster transport of goods and services within Central Luzon. He has given assurances that “once inaugurated, the new expressway lanes will not only provide faster, safer and more convenient travel to motorists, but will also decongest traffic in the urban areas.”
MNTC has already installed 800 expressway-standard LED road lighting between the Balagtas section all the way to San Fernando City. It also plans to light up an additional 33 kms along the Nlex to improve road safety.
One other benefit of the opening of the new expressway lanes is that this will provide motorists with easier access to Clark International Airport and Clark Green City, the 9,450-hectare development project within the Clark Special Economic Zone in Tarlac.
The Duterte administration has embarked on an ambitious infrastructure development program costing no less than P8 trillion from now until 2022 that will include the construction of more roads and bridges, railways and the modernization of various airports to boost economic growth. The “build, build, build” battlecry aims at sustaining the momentum of economic growth by attracting more investments and creating new jobs to reduce poverty and improve the lives of Filipinos.
Economic growth means more urban poor?
The World Bank recently released a study that made an interesting conclusion: the more Asian economies grow, the higher the likelihood that urban areas would have shantytowns or slum areas.
That means the richer a society becomes, the more there will be more urban poor despite outward signs of affluence.
The World Bank study found that about 55 percent of the urban population live in slum areas in Cambodia, 43 percent in Mongolia, 41 percent in Myanmar and 38 percent in the Philippines. In three countries with the fastest-growing economies—Vietnam, China and Indonesia—the ratio is more than 20 percent.
The World Bank concludes that these countries have become the victim of their own success, with many people from the countryside flocking to the cities for work only to end up living in slums.
“Emerging slums are proof that the economy is growing and the opportunities are often in cities,” the World Bank said. “But governments cannot keep up with providing adequate housing. There is a need to improve land-use policies and make housing finance more affordable.”
Uncontrolled migration from the countryside to the cities is what is taking place in the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries. This has strained the capability of governments to put up the necessary public infrastructure and social services. Hence, slum communities tend to rise alongside imposing skyscrapers and condominiums.
What the Philippines and other developing nations should do, the World Bank says, is to draw lessons from the success of countries like Singapore, South Korea and Japan, which also had to cope with slums in the past but have transformed their cities by building affordable housing.
The Duterte administration has drawn up a socioeconomic agenda that includes dispersing economic development to the regions. It wants to put economic hubs in all the regions outside the national capital, particularly in Mindanao, to redress decades of government inability to spur inclusive and equitable socio-economic development.
Equally interesting is the World Bank observation that the urban poor or slum-dwellers should not be a burden for the government and for society. The reality is that they fill up many of the jobs required in the urban areas and they are the backbone of the economy. They only need to be helped by the government so they can live better lives.
E-mail: ernhil@yahoo.com.