TARLAC CITY Diversified conglomerate San Miguel Corporation (SMC), through its subsidiary and toll road concessionaire Private Infra Development Corporation, Inc. (PIDC), will begin to collect fees in the Tarlac City-Gerona-Paniqui stretch of the 88.85-kilometer Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway (TPLEX) on Monday, January 6.
In a statement, PIDC said “tariff in Tarlac City to Victoria part (8.66km) are P30 for Class 1, P76 for Class 2 and P91 for Class 3 vehicles,”
“Moreover, fees from Victoria to Gerona (8.017km) are P28 for Class 1, P70 for Class 2 and P84 for Class 3. Rates for Tarlac City to Gerona (16.777km), on the other hand, are P58 for Class 1, P145 for Class 2 and P175 for Class 3,” it added.
President Benigno Aquino III formally opened TPLEX last December 23 via an inaugural drive-trough in its Paniqui exit in Tarlac.
That portion brings to 23 kilometers the total length of the TPLEX that is operational following the opening of the 17-kilometer Phase 1A from Tarlac City to Victoria, Pura, then Gerona initially for free to the public.
At present, PIDC is working on the 27-kilometer stretch from Paniqui to Moncada in Tarlac then Carmen in Pangasinan including the construction of the 950-meter Agno viaduct.
PIDC eyes an April 2014 completion of this section, ahead of its December 2014 estimate.
By then, the two-hour travel time from Tarlac to Carmen will be cut to only 30 minutes.
Moreover, the remaining 25.83-kilometer part from Urdaneta, Pangasinan to Rosario, La Union will be completed by 2015.
From end-to-end, TPLEX will traverse 17 towns and two cities in the provinces of Tarlac, Pangasinan, La Union and Nueva Ecija.
It connects the Northern and Central provinces of Luzon to Metro Manila via the North Luzon and Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressways.
Originally designed as a two-lane road, SMC decided to upgrade the infrastructure to four lanes to ensure road safety and in anticipation of future traffic growth.
Once completed, it will cut travel time from Tarlac to La Union to only an hour from the present three and a half hours. (Shane F. Velasco)
