The Tarlac–Pangasinan–La Union Expressway (TPLEX) is a controlled-access highway connecting Central Luzon and Ilocos regions of the Philippines. The expressway runs from Tarlac City to Rosario, La Union, connecting with the Subic–Clark–Tarlac Expressway (SCTEX) and Central Luzon Link Expressway (CLLEX) at its southern terminus in Tarlac City and providing a major route to the Ilocos and Cordillera regions. It is a component of Expressway 1 (E1) of the Philippine expressway network and Radial Road 8 (R-8) of the Metro Manila's arterial road network.
Plans for an expressway connecting Metro Manila and La Union were proposed before the 2000s; construction began in January 2010, and the first segments opened in October 2013. The expressway became fully operational in July 2020.
Route description
TPLEX follows a route that parallels the MacArthur Highway, running through the provinces of Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan, and La Union. The expressway has four lanes, two per direction, separated by Jersey barriers. Sections by exits, toll plazas, viaducts, and their approaches are illuminated at night. Significant sections are built on embankments overlooking rice paddy fields. The expressway crosses the four rivers in the Pangasinan province. The rivers along the TPLEX are the Agno River, Binalonan River, Aloragat River, and the Bued River.
The Tarlac–Pangasinan–La Union Expressway starts in Tarlac City as an extension of the Subic–Clark–Tarlac Expressway. The expressway passes through the municipalities of Victoria, Pura, Ramos, and Anao. Significant stretches of the expressway in Tarlac are built on embankments, and existing roads cross through underpasses built on cuts in the embankment. The road passes to Nampicuan and Cuyapo in Nueva Ecija without exit before entering Ilocos Region and Pangasinan, at the municipality of Rosales.
The Pangasinan and Ilocos Region segment of TPLEX starts in the Rosales municipality. The expressway then crosses through a viaduct over the Agno River, then enters Urdaneta, which is served by a single interchange to connect with Manila North Road. The Urdaneta exit was the expressway's northern terminus before the extension to Binalonan. Past Urdaneta Exit, TPLEX crosses above the Manila North Road, then passes over Binalonan and Pozorrubio. The last exit in the province is Sison.
Past the Sison exit, the expressway crosses as a viaduct over the Bued River. The road then enters the Rosario municipality, where the main northern toll plaza is located. Past the Rosario toll plaza, a spur road connects to the Rosario rotunda. This is the expressway's northern terminus. Proposals have been raised to extend the project to Laoag, Ilocos Norte.
History
Conception and early development Despite calls to create an expressway system from the Manila to Rosario, the southernmost town of the La Union province had been raised before the turn of the millennium. These calls began to bear fruit in the mid-2000s. In 2005, construction began on the Subic–Clark–Tarlac Expressway (SCTEX), a linked expressway system reaching Tarlac City. This was an improvement over the North Luzon Expressway's northern terminus in Mabalacat, Pampanga.
In the 1970s and 1990s, the government attempted to build the extension of the NLEX from Pampanga to Pangasinan; however, the plans were never materialized. In 1989, the Philippine National Construction Corporation proposed extending the expressway by from Mabalacat to Capas, Tarlac, and to Rosales, Pangasinan, following presidential decrees of 1977 and 1983, but the plan was not implemented.
In 1994, Italian-Thai Development pitched an idea of an extension of the NLEX to Pangasinan and La Union, as well as the expansion and widening of the expressway from four to eight lanes under the build-operate-transfer scheme. However, the agreement turned into a deadlock, and Congressman Mike Defensor was assailed for imputing motivations to Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. for resolving, and also, Benpres (now Lopez Holdings Corporation), which involved the rehabilitation and expansion of the NLEX, was planned to include the extension to Pangasinan and La Union with agreement as its revision. Nothing came out of that undertaking.
On December 30, 1996, Itochu Corporation of Japan signed an agreement with the PNCC to build the extension of the NLEX to Pangasinan, and a pre-feasibility study was conducted. Meanwhile, the route has a total length of from Mabalacat, Pampanga, to Urdaneta, Pangasinan, with a planned extension to San Fernando, La Union. When the PNCC and Itochu's proposal was not realized, the extension of the expressway was split into two expressways, the SCTEX and the segment between Clark and Tarlac City, and the TPLEX.
In 2004, the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) proposed the extension of the SCTEX to link Club John Hay in Baguio and Poro Point in San Fernando before ending in Rosario, La Union. The project, dubbed SCTEX2 as per House Resolution No. 791 authorized by Rep. Mark Cojuangco (Pangasinan–5th), cited the BCDA for its development effort. The project would later become TPLEX in 2007.
In 2006, Congressional representatives from Northern Luzon took advantage of the final reading of House Bill No. 5749 to lobby for a project to extend the expressway to Rosario, as a means to boost trade, tourism, and reduce travel times in the provinces of Tarlac, Eastern Pangasinan, and La Union. This lobbying led the Arroyo administration in October 2006 to announce a ten-year plan to extend the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX) from Mabalacat, Pampanga, to Rosario, La Union, and extend the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX) from Calamba, Laguna, to Lucena in Quezon, and eventually to Matnog, Sorsogon. In 2008, the SCTEX was formally opened, setting the stage for developing the TPLEX, which would extend beyond the SCTEX's terminus in Tarlac City. The initial construction plan for the TPLEX called for it to be implemented in two phases: The first phase would involve constructing two lanes, with the second phase expanding it to four lanes to accommodate 25,000 vehicles.
The proposed superhighway would be built parallel to MacArthur Highway, passing through the city of Tarlac and the municipalities of La Paz, Gerona, Victoria, Pura, Anao, and Ramos in Tarlac, Nampicuan and Cuyapo in Nueva Ecija, Rosales, Villasis, Urdaneta, Binalonan, Laoac, Pozorrubio, and Sison in Pangasinan, and Rosario, La Union.
Development stage Tollway alignment Phase 1 Tarlac City, Tarlac, to Rosales, Pangasinan Phase 2 Rosales, Pangasinan, to Urdaneta City, Pangasinan Phase 3 Urdaneta City, Pangasinan, to Rosario, La Union Extension Rosario, La Union, to San Fernando, La Union
The financing, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of the Tarlac–La Union Toll Expressway Phase 1 was eventually awarded to Private Infra Dev Corporation (now SMC TPLEX Corporation). Alt URL
Project financing Three local banks undertook financing the TPLEX: BDO Unibank, Development Bank of the Philippines, and Land Bank of the Philippines. This made TPLEX notable in the Infrastructure and Development Financing industry as "the first Public-Private Partnership project in the Philippines to feature an all-domestic cast of sponsors and lenders.” London-based Project Finance Magazine named the TPLEX as its "Asia Pacific Transport Deal of the Year" for 2011. Alt URL
The project is being implemented through public-private partnership using the build–operate–transfer (BOT) scheme in which the project proponent is responsible to design, finance and build the initial two-lane expressway. As each section is completed, it is turned over to the government, which then grants the proponent a franchise to operate and maintain the toll road, after which the proponent, once the Toll Regulatory Board issues a toll operation certificate, operates the road under a long term concession agreement with the government.
Development disputes
Land acquisition In the early development of the project, acquisition of rights of way (ROW) contributed to delays. With the TPLEX identified as a high priority government project, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) was tasked with acquiring the rights of way for the project's proposed alignment, and was allocated () in hope that the process could be expedited. Alt URL However, legal disputes that had arisen regarding affected properties, notably in the Tarlac segment of the project, meant delays in negotiations undertaken by the DPWH.
Alignment of the Rosario interchange The expected completion of the entire expressway caused a major delay when an unsolicited proposal was brought up to change the alignment of the project to change the location of the final interchange in Rosario, La Union. Former Pangasinan 5th District Representative Mark Cojuangco proposed three alignments: one would pass through Urdaneta City, then San Fabian, and exits Brgy. Cataguintingan of Rosario, La Union. This is about longer from the original TPLEX terminus at barangay Subusob, Rosario. The second proposal will also pass through San Fabian but will end at the original TPLEX end at barangay Subusob. The first two proposals skips Pozorrubio. The third proposal will pass through Pozorrubio, San Fabian, and then end at barangay Subusub. All proposals intend to skip the municipality of Sison. The Cordillera Administrative Region Development Council has rejected the idea. The target completion date had been moved from the end of April 2017 to the end of April 2018.
Phases 1 and 2 The first phase of the Tarlac-La Union Expressway started construction in January 27, 2010 which established the expressway's right-of-way marking the start of its existence. In April 2013, San Miguel Corporation announced that the segment from Tarlac City up to Urdaneta would be built with four lanes, instead of the initial plan of two lanes only. However, this also pushed back the opening day of the expressway from June 2013 to November 2013.
On October 25, 2013, the Toll Regulatory Board authorized the issuance of the Toll Operation Permit for the Tarlac City–Pura segment of the TPLEX after the construction of that segment was completed by Private Infra Development Corporation (PIDC), the all-Filipino consortium backed by conglomerates San Miguel Corporation (SMC) and DMCI Holdings, Inc.
This first phase, referred to as section 1A, begins with a connection to SCTEX, then stretches from Tarlac City to Victoria, and then to Pura, Tarlac. On December 23, 2013, the expressway opened up to Ramos, Tarlac, bringing TPLEX up to of its operational length, and was officially opened by President Benigno Aquino III. On April 16, 2014, phase 1 of the project was completed when the Rosales section was opened. In December 2014, phase 2 of the project, covering from Carmen to Urdaneta, was opened to traffic, as what PIDC president Mark Dumol had announced on the day the completion of phase 1 was announced.
Phase 3
In December 2014, Dumol projected that the last section, covering from Urdaneta to Rosario and including an exit in Pozorrubio, would be completed some time in 2015. However, there were delays in the implementation of the project, which included a highly disputed proposal to divert the exit away to San Fabian in Pangasinan. The DPWH and the PIDC announced in July 2015 that they will continue to follow the original plan for the last phase exiting in Rosario, adding that this last phase would be completed by the following year, 2016.
This development phase was further subdivided into phase 3A, from Urdaneta to Pozorrubio, and phase 3B, Pozorrubio to Rosario. Section 3A would include trumpet-type interchanges at Binalonan and Pozorrubio, while section 3B include an interchange at Sison and the roundabout-style terminus interchange in Rosario, La Union.http://www.dpwh.gov.ph/PPP/projs/tplex.htm accessed September 1, 2016.