This is the new Davao City-Samal Island, and it is one of the grandest bridges to be constructed in Davao. This project will finally help the growing number of tourists coming into Samal Island, as it has been in recent years a beautiful tourist spot.

Courtesy of Mark Villar.

Some footage are for presentation only.

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The Documentary by bdProductions(envato)

This is the Davao-Samal Bridge, and it is a massive 4 kilometer bridge project that would cross Pakiputan Strait to connect Davao City and the island garden city of Samal. The project is estimated to cost up to a striking 19 billion pesos!

This ambitious bridge project will significantly improve mobility and bring down travel time to over 25,000 daily motorists in the area, whereas it will only take 2 to 5 minutes to drive from the start of the bridge to the end and vice versa, this direct route will finally cut the unnecessary costs to sail from each land.

Under the proposal it will be a four-lane bridge which will offer toll-free to its travelers, which even shows that it would not only help its residents move from one place to the other in a safer, faster and better way but would also be free of charge! It’s main span measures over 250 meters and has a vertical navigation clearance of 47 meters. The entire bridge will likewise be supported by 2 pylons, which has a height of 73 meters. Seen throughout the photos given by the officials, we could definitely recognize that the design would be extravagant and something that would appeal to international tourists. We could still see a future development of trains within it. This may indeed be linked to the future 1,500 kilometer Mindanao Railway.

This mega bridge project was proposed as they expected that Samal Island has a high-growth potential, whereas it could bring over 700,000 visitors annually, and might help the 100,000 residents living in it. It is in fact taken as there are an increasing number of ferries going in and out of the island, and the need for a bridge was asked for as the economic capability of a more vibrant tourist spot is steadily growing.

The construction date will start around mid to end 2021, which is just a few months away. It was in fact only green lighted on the 14th of January 2021. Which shows that the date from its approval to its construction is moving fast and its finish date would be by 2024 and expected to commence its operation by the year 2025 and onwards. The financing party of this would come from the People’s Republic of China through its China International Development Cooperation Agency.
While it may sound like a newly schemed bridge, it has actually been conceptualized over 40 years ago, but it is only now that we are seeing it come to existence. There are however just a few things that may cause some form of uncertainty from this bridge, it is obviously the destruction of coral reefs and marine life, through different studies they have indicated that a huge portion of the water species would die out but according to the government the environment will be protected throughout the phases of its construction, and there will also be no displacement among the affected families. But as always, only time will tell if it will really have a form of disruption or not.

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