THE mayors of Metro Manila have agreed to remove the window hours for the private vehicles traversing Epifanio de los Santos Avenue and Circumferential Road 5 to ease traffic in the metropolis, the Metro Manila Development Authority said Friday.
The agency made the announcement a few days after meeting with the mayors and the members of the Inter-agency Council on Traffic in Pasig City.
The window hours refer to the five-hour period when motorists covered by the Number Coding Scheme may still pass Edsa and C5 without being apprehended.
That period is 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., but removing the window hours means the vehicles covered by the Number Coding Scheme may not pass Edsa or C5 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
“In a bid to decongest traffic in Metro Manila, the Inter-Agency Council on Traffic and the Metro Manila Council have agreed to come up with a Resolution to remove the window hours for private vehicles traversing Edsa and C5,” the MMDA said in an advisory.
“The Resolution is set to be implemented on Oct. 31, 2016, 15 working days after its publication on Oct. 10.”
Lawmakers earlier urged the government to remove the window hours to ease the traffic in Metro Manila.
They said removing the window would reduce the number of vehicles on Metro Manila’s roads by about 20 percent.
MMDA officials admit that the increasing number of private vehicles is the major cause of the traffic jams along Edsa. They say more than 6,800 vehicles are using Edsa per hour in one direction higher than the artery’s capacity of 6,000 vehicles per hour.
The gridlock on Edsa remains despite the Number Coding Scheme that bans vehicles on the artery one day a week depending on the last digit on their license plates.
The MMDA says about 6,000 cars are sold in the country each month, and that 90 percent of the vehicles using Edsa are private.
A study says a mega city like Metro Manila should have 25 percent of its total land area allotted for roads, but only 5,000 kilometers of road network is in place there instead of the ideal 8,000 kilometers.
