P4 billion CCLEX interchange underway

CEBU, Philippines — Pre-construction work has begun on the ?4-billion Cebu-Cordova Link Expressway–Cebu South Coastal Road (CCLEX-CSCR) Interchange Project, which is expected to ease traffic congestion at the South Road Properties (SRP) without displacing hundreds of coastal families.

Six marine drilling rigs are currently positioned offshore to conduct geotechnical investigations, including borehole drilling and core sampling, as part of the preparation of the project's Detailed Engineering Design (DED).

Cebu City Mayor Nestor Archival and Cebu-Cordova Link Expressway Corp. (CCLEC) President and General Manager Allan Alfon inspected the ongoing work, describing the interchange as an urgent solution to daily traffic bottlenecks affecting motorists traveling between mainland Cebu and Mactan Island.

Under the current road configuration, motorists traveling from Cebu City proper to the Mactan-Cebu International Airport via CCLEX must take a lengthy detour, heading roughly 17 kilometers south through the congested SRP toward the Talisay boundary before making a U-turn to access the expressway viaduct.

Once completed, the interchange will allow motorists to access CCLEX directly through new ramps, providing a more direct route toward Cordova and the airport while bypassing the SRP traffic bottleneck.

"Traffic is one of our biggest problems—aside from producing greenhouse gases that add to global warming, solving it will also make our economic activity much stronger," Archival said in Cebuano during the site briefing, noting that frequent accidents along the coastal road often bring traffic to a standstill.

The decision to prioritize the offshore interchange followed a reassessment of the expressway's original expansion plans.

CCLEC initially planned to construct direct access ramps connecting the expressway to Barangay Pasil and the mouth of the Guadalupe River near V. Rama Avenue.

However, technical assessments showed that proceeding with the Pasil ramp immediately would involve significant right-of-way challenges.

Alfon said CCLEC's latest survey identified nearly 600 informal settler families living along the proposed Pasil alignment.

Relocating the families could delay construction for years and create additional challenges for the city, particularly in terms of preserving their livelihoods.

"It is very difficult to relocate them because we share the responsibility of finding a place for them to move," Archival explained. "If we move them to the mountain barangays, their livelihoods are right here at the Pasil fish port."

After assuming office, Archival wrote to Alfon proposing that CCLEC's technical team explore an alternative offshore alignment that would avoid existing structures and right-of-way disputes.

Following several weeks of study, CCLEC agreed to defer the Pasil-Guadalupe ramp to a later phase and prioritize the offshore CCLEX-CSCR interchange, which Alfon described as faster to implement and more economically advantageous.

During the site inspection, CCLEC engineer Nichol Caballero explained that the ongoing marine drilling is a critical geotechnical investigation used to determine the seabed's subsurface conditions and load-bearing capacity before major construction begins.

Although commonly referred to as soil testing, marine bridge engineering requires deep borehole drilling and core sampling rather than simple surface soil analysis.

Using six specialized rigs, engineers are drilling as deep as 50 meters below the seabed to extract rock and sediment samples and identify the underlying bedrock.

The results will guide the design of the interchange's bored piles, or deep reinforced concrete foundations installed in cylindrical shafts drilled into the seabed to transfer the structure's weight to stable underground rock.

Determining the seabed's resistance will allow engineers to calculate the appropriate depth, diameter, and steel reinforcement requirements for each foundation.

Based on the initial engineering designs, the interchange will consist of two separate ramp structures, each supported by 20 posts, for a total of 40 marine foundations.

The ?4-billion project is being implemented under a public-private partnership (PPP) arrangement between CCLEC and the local governments of Cebu City and Cordova.

The two local governments will serve as project grantors and provide regulatory support, while CCLEC will finance construction and operate and maintain the infrastructure under a concession agreement lasting more than 40 years before turning it over to the local governments.

Alfon estimated that actual civil works would take about a year and a half after the detailed engineering design is completed, putting the interchange on track for opening by the end of 2028.-