Toll road builder and operator NLEX Corp. said on Friday that it has asked the national government to allow the enterprise to rebuild the accident prone Marilao Interchange Bridge to put a stop to traffic disruptions that inconvenience motorists every so often.
This was revealed by NLEX traffic operations head Robin Ignacio in a broadcast interview who acknowledged that the corporation is blamed for each incident when it has absolutely no way of addressing each one as it happens.
It has come to light that the bridge in question is classified as a provincial road infrastructure that needs to be converted into a national government (NG) structure to allow the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to take over and make the necessary repairs.
However, Ignacio said, the proposed rebuild or rehabilitation is better said than done as the conversion requires an act of Congress that could take ages to accomplish. In the meantime, the interchange bridge gets hit by recalcitrant truck drivers who, despite reinforced gantries and more stringent monitoring, insist on toll road access that result to the inconvenience of hundreds of thousands of motorists using the NLEX.
According to Ignacio, NLEX Corp. has formally asked the DPWH to rehabilitate the offending interchange bridge at the corporation’s expense, and this is where the request stands.
Earlier, NLEX Corp. waived the toll charged against motorists using the Marilao exit as temporary measure upon request by Department of Transportation chief Vince Dizon. Ignacio said this has since been lifted as emergency rehabilitation measures bite.
For now, Ignacio said, preventing another traffic mayhem at the Marilao interchange bridge rests upon continued stringent monitoring of oversized trucks whose drivers evade capture either by accessing the toll road from a different entry point and ignoring the gantries that have been there all the time.
The interchange bridge had been hit twice thus far this year – once on 19 March when an 18-wheeler damaged two bridge girders and again on 18 June when a container truck hit the structure again and killed one person and injured others.
