ANGELES CITY – Starting Jan. 6, toll fees will be imposed on the 23-kilometer portion of the still-unfinished Tarlac- Pangasinan- La Union Expressway (TPLEx).
This has been announced by the San Miguel Corporation (SMC), through its subsidiary and toll road concessionaire Private Infra Development Corporation, Inc. (PIDC), the financer and operator of the expressway that would stretch 88.85 kilometers when finished.
The PIDC said the toll fees will cover the Tarlac City-Gerona-Paniqui stretch. In a statement, PIDC said “tariff in Tarlac City to Victoria part covering 8.66 kilometers are P30 for Class 1, P76 for Class 2 and P91 for Class 3
vehicles,” On the other hand “”toll fees from Victoria to Gerona stretching 8.017 kilometers are P28 for Class 1, P70 for Class 2 and P84 for Class 3.
Rates at the portion between Tarlac City and Gerona which is 16.777 kilometers long are P58 for Class 1, P145
for Class 2 and P175 for Class 3, the PIDC also announced. Pres. Aquino formally opened finished portions of
the TPLEx last December 23 via an inaugural drive-through 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, and Gerona. At present, no fees are being collected by PIDC from motorists using the TPLEx section.
The PIDC said it is also working on the 27-kilometer stretch from Paniqui to Moncada in Tarlac then Carmen in Pangasinan, on top of the construction of the 950-meter Agno viaduct. PIDC eyes an April 2014 completion for this section, ahead of its December 2014 target date.
Once these sections are also fi nished, the two-hour travel time from Tarlac to Carmen will be cut to only 30 minutes. The PIDC also said the remaining 25.83-kilometer TPLEx 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, PIDC noted. It also noted that TPLEx “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. The PIDC also said that once fully completed, TPLEx will cut travel time from Tarlac to La Union to only an hour from the present three and a half hours.
