THE Metro Manila Development Authority has floated yet another trial balloon aimed at relieving traffic congestion on EDSA by limiting the number of private vehicles on the main thoroughfare. This time, the MMDA wants to ban vehicles with only one driver on board from EDSA from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m, Monday to Friday. Officials seem to be encouraged by the initial lack of a public outcry, but that might be due to the insidious way it soft-pedaled the proposal, saying the measure would be considered “sometime next year.” This is a proposal that must be disavowed now.
First, the proposal, much like “number coding,” involves no actual traffic management on the ground, but instead depends on yet another imposition on long-suffering motorists. Like number coding, this proposed ban on single-driver vehicles is a curtailment of a person’s property rights, because it restricts what a person can do with property he has legally purchased. Even worse, it offers the motorist nothing in return for the sacrifice, because it fails to address the main cause of traffic congestion—the lack of discipline on the road.
As a preface to the proposed regulation, the MMDA observes that the annual average daily traffic in Metro Manila has more than doubled, from 1.33 million vehicles in 1996 to 2.63 million in 2016. The document provides no data, however, of the number of vehicles along the main highway that it seeks to regulate further. Nor does the raw statistic take into account the number of vehicles that are already off the roads because of the number coding restrictions.
Under the proposal:
• A public or private vehicle with the driver and one passenger on board is allowed on EDSA subject to number coding.
• A public or private vehicle with the driver and two or more passengers on board will be allowed to use EDSA and will be exempted from number coding.
The policy will be implemented from Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. except holidays, covering the stretch of EDSA North Avenue in Quezon City until EDSA Magallanes in Makati, both northbound and southbound.
These restrictions will adversely affect a certain class of motorist. This includes a parent who must drop off or pick up his or her children from school; a driver who has dropped off his passenger along the affected stretch of EDSA; a taxi or a shared car driver who must drop off a fare—and all other individuals who might be otherwise productive, if only they did not have to find a circuitous route to work simply because of this ill-considered regulation.
It is one thing to encourage car pooling; it is something altogether different to bar single-driver vehicles from using the highway.
As a final insult, traffic enforcers will be allowed to stop heavily-tinted vehicles to verify the number of occupants. This is an unwarranted violation of privacy–and yet another opportunity for bribery and corruption.
This trial balloon must be shot down before it sees the light of day.