THE Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) said close to 3,000 motorists violated the expanded high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) scheme or the ban on vehicles with no passengers during the first day of the dry run of the new scheme on Wednesday.
a.m. to 10 a.m. and from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays. PHOTO BY RUY L. MARTINEZ
MMDA spokesman Celine Pialago said 2,953 vehicles with no passengers and 156 heavily tinted vehicles plied EDSA during morning rush hours.
The violators were not apprehended as this was just a dry-run.
Full implementation of the ban of vehicles with no passengers will be on August 23.
“But this is subject to changes depending on results of the one-week dry run,” Pialago told reporters during the weekly Fernandina media forum at Club Filipino in Greenhills, San Juan City.
The MMDA spokesman said the biggest challenge for the agency in implementing such traffic scheme is that there are many private vehicles that are tinted, making it difficult for them to see if they have passengers.
“That [tinted vehicles] remains a challenge for us because we just rely on the light inside the vehicle to see how many passengers are there,” Pialago added.
“If heavily tinted vehicles remain to be our problems, then we will talk with the Land Transportation Office to do something about this,” she said.
According to Pialago, violators would be fined P1,000 for the first offense, and another P1,000 for the succeeding offenses.
Under the new scheme, vehicles with no passengers will be banned from EDSA during rush hours — or from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Pialago said vehicles with no passengers would be allowed to cross EDSA.
Illegal
Leaders of the Senate however called on the MMDA to recall and suspend the implementation of the driver-only ban scheme.
Senate President Vicente Sotto 3rd, along with Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto, Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri and Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon, filed Senate Resolution 845, noting that the traffic scheme was formulated in the absence of any public consultation.
The resolution was filed on the same day that the MMDA started the dryrun of the traffic scheme along the 24-kilometer stretch of Edsa.
“The implementation of a regulation that would allegedly affect seventy percent [70 percent] of the motor vehicles plying and enjoying the use of the Philippines’ major thoroughfare without holding a prior public consultation or hearing is violative of the due process of laws enshrined and protected under the Constitution,” the resolution stated.
It noted that the driver-only ban of the MMDA would effectively deprive thousands tax-paying motorists of the use of the country’s major thoroughfare since it would be in effect during working and commuting hours of the week.
The senators cited the warning of transportation experts, including University of the Philippines Planning and Development Research Foundation Primitivo Cal, that such “piecemeal” or “band-aid” measure could even worsen traffic congestion as it could encourage the proliferation of unauthorized “for-hire” vehicles or colorum, as shown by the recently scrapped Indonesian model.
A transportation research also showed that the HOV regulation, whose main objective is to encourage carpooling, would not eliminate congestion.
“The implementation of HOV lanes in other jurisdictions, including the United States, Canada and Indonesia, have been criticized as ineffective and counterproductive in addressing traffic congestion,” the senators said in the resolution.
They urged the MMDA to conduct public consultations and further study the driver-only ban and provide real solutions to Metro Manila traffic woes.
Recto said the scheme would result in net reduction of vehicle volume because it would only divert the problem from Edsa to other roads.
“We are shooing cars away from the main artery to minor roads not wide enough to handle the surge in volume,” he said.
With reports from JEFFERSON ANTIPORDA