Quotations submitted by six construction companies or consortia for the government’s public tender for the design and construction of the northern section of the Light Rail Transit (LRT) East Line range from 4.47 billion and 5.13 billion patacas, the Public Works Bureau (DSOP) announced in a statement yesterday.
The 7.7-kilometre-long LRT East Line will connect the Barrier Gate border checkpoint and the Taipa Ferry Terminal in Pac On via the Zone A and Zone E1 land reclamation areas. The East Line will cross the sea between Zone A and Zone E1 through an undersea tunnel.
The government launched two separate public tenders for the LRT East Line project, namely the northern section and southern section, on October 26 last year.
The deadline for bid submissions for the northern-section project ended on Monday. A total of six construction companies or consortia submitted their bids, which were unsealed by DSOP officials yesterday. All bids were accepted.
The deadline for bid submissions for the southern-section project ends today. The submitted bids will then be unsealed tomorrow.
The LRT East Line will have six stations, including three stations in Zone A. All six stations will be built underground.
The first two stations of the LRT East Line, ES1 and ES2, will be built off the north-eastern coast of the peninsula. The two stations will require the land reclamation of the mudflats (aka tidal flats) off the coast.
The first station, ES1, will be built near the Barrier Gate checkpoint, while the second station, ES2, will be located near the Residência Macau residential estate.
The East Line will then run into Zone A, which will have three stations, namely ES3, ES4 and ES5, before crossing the sea through an undersea tunnel. The East Line will then enter Zone E1 where there will be one underground station, ES6, the sixth and last station of the LRT East Line. Afterwards, the track will gradually leave the underground segment and run on an elevated track before linking up with the Taipa Ferry Terminal station, the eastern terminus of the LRT Taipa section – Macau’s first LRT which came into service in December 2019.
Northern & southern sections
According to the DSOP website, the 2.9-kilometre-long LRT East Line northern section will run from the ES1 station to the ES4 station, while the 4.8-kilometre-long southern section will run from the ES4 station to the ES6 station before linking up with the LRT Taipa section’s Taipa Ferry Terminal station.
Yesterday’s DSOP statement pointed out that the LRT East Line northern-section project will comprise the construction of three stations, namely ES1, ES2 and ES3, as well as three segments of an underground tunnel, namely ES1-ES2 segment, ES2-ES3 segment, and ES3-ES4 segment. According to the statement, the northern-section project will not include the construction of the ES4 station, which will be built by the constructors of the southern-section project.
The government said last year that the LRT East Line project is slated to be completed in 2028.
Project to start in H2
According to the DSOP website, the bureau has set a maximum period of 1,500 working days for the respective winning bidders of the LRT East Line northern-section project and southern-section project to complete them. The winning bidders are required to carry out the projects’ final construction designs first before starting the construction.
Yesterday’s DSOP statement announced that the quotations for the LRT East Line northern-section project (final design plus construction) proposed by the six bidders range from 4.47 billion patacas and 5.13 billion patacas.
Yesterday’s statement also said that the bureau expects the LRT East Line northern-section project to get off the ground in the second half of this year.
The bureau also said that the northern and the southern-section projects will get off the ground at around the same time.
Zone A is primarily being developed for public housing projects, with only some plots earmarked for private residential projects.
Public Works Bureau (DSOP) officials, including DSOP Director Lam Wai Hou (second from left), pose with six boxes of bidding documents for the government’s public tender for the Light Rail Transit (LRT) East Line northern-section project, on the bureau’s premises in Zape yesterday. – Photo: DSOP
This map taken from the Public Works Bureau’s (DSOP) website yesterday shows the Light Rail Transit (LRT) East Line indicated by the red line.
