CEBU CITY—The Cebu-Cordova Link Expressway (CCLEX) project is already 87.14 percent complete, inching closer to its much-awaited opening to motorists.
The P30-billion toll bridge will be substantially completed by end of 2021. It will use an all-electronic toll collection system when it opens in the first quarter of 2022 to provide motorists safe and seamless travel.
The Cebu Cordova Link Expressway Corporation (CCLEC) has already started the online registration for the installation of RFID (radio-frequency identification) stickers, which motorists will need in order to pass CCLEX, through https://mptc.outsystemsenterprise.com/ORRAS/.
Topping the construction accomplishment is the completion of the CCLEX main bridge deck that connects Cebu City and Municipality of Cordova. Works have now moved to the construction of the deck’s safety barrier.
CCLEX, which will be the third link to Mactan Island from Cordova Municipality to mainland Cebu through Cebu City’s South Road Properties, has a design speed of 80 kilometers per hour (kph) and a navigational clearance or height of 51 meters to allow large vessels to pass underneath the bridge.
Not only is CCLEX seen to reduce traffic and make traveling more convenient but also spur trade activities and open greater economic opportunities for Cebu and the rest of the Visayas region.
“We do part of our perhaps impossible dreams in trying to connect this country. Part of it is for Filipinos to see and travel the country as one seamless journey,” Manny V. Pangilinan, the chairman of the Metro Pacific Tollways Corporation (MPTC), said during the ceremonial walkthrough last October 29.
CCLEX is MPTC’s first toll road project outside Luzon.
Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia said that CCLEX will help solve traffic problems in Metro Cebu as traffic will be diverted to the Third Bridge once it opens and it will decongest the First and Second Cebu-Mactan bridges.
“The possibilities are exciting and limitless,” Garcia said during the ceremonial walk on the bridge’s main deck.