Project becomes RoW monument

The half-built overpass looming over C-5 near Heritage Memorial Park in Taguig City has become more than an eyesore — it has become a monument to government inefficiency.

The skeletal structure of pillars, part of the Southeast Metro Manila Expressway (SEMME) or Skyway Stage 4, has sat unfinished since the pandemic. It appears to go nowhere, with no visible start or end, baffling the motorists who pass by it daily.

Nosy Tarsee assumed it was a dedicated Ayala overpass built solely to serve ARCA South, a suspicion fueled by Ayala’s deep involvement in the surrounding development. In reality, it is part of a larger government-concessionaire expressway tied to the former Food Terminal Inc. (FTI) site, which Ayala redeveloped into ARCA South.

The structure has not been totally abandoned. It represents real, if frozen, progress on a much-needed expressway. But the project has been strangled by a familiar villain: right-of-way (RoW) acquisitions. Private property negotiations in the FTI and ARCA South area, and across other parts of Taguig, have repeatedly stalled construction, triggering costly pauses, interchange redesigns, and alignment changes. The pandemic piled them on.

Further complicating matters are the project’s many moving parts: planned connections to the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX) and the Skyway, the proposed Taguig Intermodal Transport Exchange (TITX), an ARCA South terminal, and integration with Ayala’s broader development. Each dependency creates another cause of delay.

The result is a ghost structure — ambitious in concept, paralyzed in execution — that daily commuters are left to stare at and wonder about.