“Trains for the Metro Rail Transit 7 (MRT-7) will arrive in the Philippines by the first week of September this year, Transportation Sec. Arthur Tugade wrote in a Facebook post on Sept. 2.
These trains, consisting of six train cars (two trainsets), were procured from Hyundai ROTEM Company in South Korea.
The MRT-7 project is a 22-kilometer railway project that aims to reduce travel time between North Avenue in Quezon City and San Jose del Monte in Bulacan from the current two to three hours to just 35 minutes.
It has 14 stations and can accommodate from 525,000 to 850,000 passengers daily.
MRT-7 construction activities on the guideway and stations as well as the electronic and mechanical works continue amid the pandemic.
The unsolicited proposal for the MRT-7 was first submitted to the-then Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) in 2001. The Concession Agreement was signed in 2008, groundbreaking activity was in April 2016, while actual construction started in August 2016. – jlo
