SC gives MMDA 10 days to reply to petitions vs Edsa bus ban

MANILA, Philippine — The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and Metro Manila Council (MMC) have been given 10 days by the Supreme Court to respond to three petitions seeking to nullify their proposed ban on provincial buses plying Edsa, the metropolis’ main thoroughfare.

During their weekly full court session on Tuesday, members of the high tribunal tackled the petitions filed between April 29 and June 7 seeking to strike down the new MMDA policy for being unconstitutional and causing hardship to thousands of commuters.

The justices directed MMDA chair Danilo Lim and the MMC, composed of the 17 Metro mayors, to submit their response within 10 days.

The petitions were filed by AKO Bicol party-list Representatives Ronald Ang and Alfredo Garbin Jr.; Albay Rep. Joey Salceda and Bayan Muna party-list on April 29, May 27 and June 7, respectively.

They argued that the ban was not the answer to the traffic problem since there were only around 3,300 provincial buses compared to 12,000 city buses and 248,000 private vehicles that ply Edsa every day.

For MMDA traffic czar Bong Nebrija, another possible solution was to bring back the high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane policy which would ban cars with only one occupant during rush hour.

The revival of the HOV policy was being mulled following President Duterte’s promise to reduce the travel time from Makati to Cubao along Edsa to just 5 minutes by December.

“We can achieve this feat. It’s still six months from the deadline. We’ll just focus on coming up with traffic schemes to reduce the volume of cars on the road,” Nebrija said on Tuesday. —With a report from Krixia Subingsubing