The Metro Manila Development Authority has revived two previous rules to decongest the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue and other major thoroughfares in the metropolis.
MMDA acting chairman Thomas Orbos said the agency will reimpose its closed-door policy for public utility buses as well as the motorcycle lanes scheme.
“We have many small things that we ignore. Just like the buses on Edsa, we will reimpose the closed door policy. The passengers themselves are to blame—they take the bus outside the designated bus stop. We can penalize them,” Orbos said.
In 1991, the MMDA enacted Ordinance No. 18 to regulate the use of selected bus stops along Edsa and other major bus routes in Metro Manila.
The ordinance provides that “doors of moving buses shall remain closed in between designated stops to avoid loading and unloading of passengers.”
Violators will be penalized with P1,000 and their vehicles will be impounded.
Orbos said his agency will also revive the motorcycle lanes, which was initiated by then MMDA chairman Francis Tolentino in 2012.
“We will begin to intensify the enforcement on motorcycle lanes along Commonwealth and Edsa. We did this during the time of Chairman Tolentino and we will do it again,” he said.
The designated motorcycle lane shall be the fourth lane from the right sidewalk and shall run the length of Edsa from Monumento in Caloocan City to SM Mall of Asia in Pasay City, and vice versa.
The lanes are “non-exclusive”—which means that private vehicles may also use them.
The MMDA said the implementation of the motorcycle lanes is necessary to promote a more orderly flow of traffic along the major thoroughfare and reduce the number of fatal accidents involving motorcycles.
Motorcycle riders may deviate from the motorcycle lanes when making a turn or u-turn at authorized intersections and u-turn slots, in which case they are to gradually shift lanes not less than 200 meters away from the turning point, while making the appropriate signals.
MMDA records showed that motorcycle crashes remained the leading cause of death and injury on Metro Manila roads.
Based on its 2015 Metro Manila Accident Recording and Analysis System report, the MMDA said motorcycles have the “highest fatality accident rate” with 262 the total number of deaths, followed by trucks (129) and private cars (125).
Motorcycles also topped the list of vehicles with the most number of injuries at 11,620, followed by cars (7,427) and public utility jeepneys (2,161).
The report noted that the number of road accidents in Metro Manila has increased to 95,615 incidents in 2015, up by 5,357 from the 90,258 cases recorded in 2014.
The total number of deaths last year also went up to 519 from the 418 fatalities in 2014.
The World Health Organization, in its 2015 report, also said that 1.25 million people have died worldwide because of road accidents, with motorcycle riders comprising 23 percent of the fatalities.