Pay parking banned on San Juan roads

San Juan City Mayor Francis Zamora. PHOTO by RYAN LEAGOGO/INQUIRER.net

The San Juan local government has banned pay parking on all of the city’s streets starting on Monday as Metro Manila mayors race to meet the 60-day deadline for “reclaiming all public roads.”

In issuing Executive Order (EO) No. 7 on Thursday, Mayor Francis Zamora dramatically widened the scope of another EO he signed just a week earlier.

It prohibited parking on portions of Annapolis, Club Filipino, Missouri and Connecticut Streets which had been designated as alternate routes to Edsa.

The new EO, however, declared the entirety of the four roads near Greenhills Shopping Center as no-parking zones, in addition to “all other streets in the City of San Juan used as pay parking [areas] by the city government … or by the barangay.”

The order is likely the most sweeping yet amid a growing consensus that only decisive action can solve Metro Manila’s perennial traffic woes.

San Juan may be the smallest city in the metropolis, but its central location and shared border with Quezon City and Manila makes it an ideal point of passage.

A section of Edsa is also in San Juan, and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority hopes that clearing the city’s roads will help decongest the nation’s busiest thoroughfare.

EO No. 7 gave the city’s Traffic Management and Parking Office, Task Force Disiplina, traffic police and barangay officials the authority to apprehend drivers, issue citation tickets and initiate the towing of vehicles caught in violation of the order.