682 motorcycle drivers apprehended on first day of motorbike lane
MANILA, Philippines – Valentine’s Day started early for Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman Francis Tolentino and some 60 MMDA traffic enforcers, who gathered before daybreak at the MMDA headquarters in Guadalupe, Makati for a mission.
They were bent on spreading the love on the use of motorcycle lanes along the Epifanio delos Santos Ave. (EDSA), on the first day of its implementation. However, their mission involved apprehending 682 motorbike riders the whole day.
“With the use of the motorcycle lanes in EDSA, we hope to see a dramatic decrease from the 700 accidents we see on the road every year,” Tolentino told reporters Tuesday.
A “dry run” of the motorcycle lanes will be done from Tuesday to Sunday, in which violators will not be penalized, but will be required to attend a 15-minute road safety seminar to be conducted near Roxas Blvd., Orense, White Plains, Timog Ave. and Quezon Ave., according to MMDA.
However, the first day of implementation of the motorcycle lanes were disrupted by minor hiccups, which were later on resolved.
At around 6:30 a.m., Tolentino and his men, including some 20 motorcycle riders from the Motorcycle Philippines Foundation, launched a motorcade from EDSA-Orense to the People Power Monument in White Plains, Quezon City, one of the designated seminar areas.
However, when they got there, at around 7 a.m., the tent for the seminars had yet to be fixed. When the first seminar began minutes after the venue was set up, the first takers had to sit through a manual presentation with tarpaulin “slides” given by MMDA staff over a megaphone, as the generator needed for the audio-visual presentation had not been properly set up.
Six motorcycle riders were the first to undergo the seminar at White Plains, including Andrew Fronda, 32, a general maintenance worker from Pasig; Arman Gapate, 27, who works as a delivery boy for a dimsum restaurant; and a newspaper delivery boy, who refused to be named.
They were flagged after enforcers saw they were wearing slippers and not wearing a proper motorcycle helmet, and, in the case of the newspaper delivery boy, for carrying quite a heavy load of a major broadsheet (not the Inquirer), on the space in front and behind him.
Tolentino, who supervised the first seminar, reminded the drivers that the MMDA would not just penalize riders straying away from the motorcycle lanes, also known as “blue lanes” for the strips of light blue paint marking it.
“By Monday, we will also start penalizing motorcycle riders who use cell phones while driving, fail to wear their helmet, have three or more riding on the motorcycle, and driving under the influence,” he said.
Fines range from P150 for using a cell phone, failure to wear a helmet, and failure to turn on headlights while riding; P300 for wearing sandos, shorts, sandals and slippers while driving; P500 for failure to use the motorcycle lane; and P2,000 for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
The kinks were ironed out, and, by 9:45 a.m., the MMDA has schooled 381 violators. The number rose to 663 at around 11:50 a.m., but reached 682 apprehended, as of 3 p.m.
Asked for an assessment of how the first day of the implementation went, Tolentino said it went as planned.
“The violators we apprehended have been very cooperative so far. But the real results will be seen in about three weeks,” Tolentino said in a phone interview.
“If we can reduce the number of accidents we see on EDSA, that is when we can say that our program is successful.”
He noted that, taken into perspective with the 12,000 motorcycle riders who have been plying EDSA everyday, the number of those apprehended was quite low.
“We expect to sustain these numbers throughout the week-long dry run,” he said.
As for the violators who were interviewed by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, their only issue with the motorcycle lane was that they were banned from overtaking.
“It could be quite hard not to overtake other vehicles when you are on a motorcycle,” Fronda said. “But I’ll really try to follow that.”
Meanwhile, Gapate and the newspaper delivery boy, who were en route to their customers, said they were not inconvenienced with the seminar.
“It was pretty fast, and we could still catch up. The siopao at the back of my bike is still fresh,” said Gapate.
The two vowed to obey traffic rules.
“Nagkataon lang na umulan, kaya nag-tsinelas lang ako [It just rained the whole night, that’s why I had to wear slippers],” Fronda said.
