THE Metro Manila Development Authority will exempt from the number coding scheme private vehicles interested in the planned carpooling in the National Capital Region, MMDA acting chairman Thomas Orbos said Friday.
“Under the initial plan, each car should have at least three passengers and the car must be registered here at the MMDA,” said Orbos.
The registration, according to Orbos, is necessary to prevent unscrupulous individuals who own private vans from engaging in illegal transportation services.
“There is also a prerequisite: One is the car should not be heavily tinted and that the passengers should be co-workers, neighbors or relatives of the driver,” he said.
Orbos said Uber and Grab, or vehicles under the Transport Network Vehicle Service applications, will be excluded from the carpooling system.
Transport experts believe that carpooling system would reduce cars on the road. They said at least 323,000 vehicles are plying Epifanio de los Santos Avenue a day, and at least half of those vehicles have only one passenger.
“Because of the reduction of vehicles in the road, reduction of the emissions of greenhouse gases is also a benefit, and because of the reduction of smoke in the air, it would also benefit the people’s health,” they said.
The experts said the system also trains kinship among the community as passengers would share the costs for filling up the car and also the toll fee. With the continuing toll and gas fee hikes, carpooling might be a possible way to reduce traffic along Edsa, and possibly along the Philippines’ most congested thoroughfares and highways.
Two years ago, the MMDA came up with a mobile application allowing carpooling among friends in the social media or people living within the same area and going to a common destination.
The mobile app “Friend Trip” is a free gadget application which will allow Facebook users and those living within the same street, village, subdivision or compound to travel via as a group. The project aimed to help ease traffic congestion and curb pollution in Metro Manila.
The Friend Trip application only recognizes one’s Facebook friends so that he/she never has to ride with strangers. It gives an option to users to have the MMDA record all their trips.
Former public works secretary Rogelio Singson also pushed for the car pooling scheme and proposed banning of cars with fewer than three passengers during peak hours of 7 to 10 in the morning, and 5 to 8 in the evening along Edsa.
Members of the Automobile Association Philippines (AAP) expressed their support to the proposal but they suggested that the government should lift first the Unified Vehicular Volume Reduction Program, or the number coding scheme.
Under the number coding scheme, vehicles are banned from major roads in Metro Manila from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., depending on the last digit of their license plates.
The group said the government must also remove and clear all arterial roads of obstructions such as sidewalk vendors and parked vehicles so that alternate routes may be open to motorists who do not have enough passengers riding with them.