Train car units for the North-South Commuter Railway (NSCR) project of the Department of Transportation (DOTr) and the Philippine National Railways (PNR) are expected arrive in December this year.
DOTr Secretary Art Tugade said the training simulator for the PNR Clark Phase 1 project will be delivered earlier — between September and October.
“The trains for the project will arrive in December. The DOTr is preparing a depot for them,” said . Tugade who visited the Valenzuela and Bulacan segments of the NSCR) project this week.
Four previous attempts to build it, the PNR Clark Phase 1 project did not take off. Currently, the construction of the rail project is at a 45.82% overall progress rate. Girders will be set on piles over the next two weeks.
Conceptualized in 1993 and with funding from the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the PNR Clark Phase 1 Project is a 38-kilometer railway from the Tutuban Station in Manila, through the cities of Caloocan and Valenzuela and the municipalities of Meycuayan, Marilao, Bocaue, Balagtas, Guiguinto, and ends in Malolos City, Bulacan.
Phase 2 – from Malolos to Clark — is a 54-kilometer rail line that will also feature the country’s first-ever Airport Express, expected to reduce travel time from the Clark International Airport in Pampanga to Makati City to about an hour.
Shelved for two decades, the PNR Clark Phase 2 Project is now at 28.79% complete. Completing the PNR NSCR Project is the PNR Clark Phase 3 — Manila to Calamba section.
The NSCR Project forms part of the “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure development program of the administration of President Duterte.