MMDA mulling new scheme to ban vehicles 2 days a week

Are you willing to go carless for one more day during the workweek to ease traffic for everyone?

The chair of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) on Wednesday floated the idea of expanding the so-called number coding scheme and keep vehicles off the road not just one but two days a week.

MMDA Chair Francis Tolentino said the agency had started studying possible changes in the scheme formally known as the Unified Vehicular Volume Reduction Program (UVVRP), whose concept was introduced in the late 1990s.

Tolentino spoke of the plan to reporters on the sidelines of the Asian Crisis Management Conference which gathered about a hundred of urban managers and experts in Asia, and following media reports on a study made by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) showing that the country loses P2.4 billion in potential income daily due to traffic congestion in the capital.

Under the current UVVRP, private and public vehicles with plate numbers ending in 1 or 2 are barred from the streets 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Mondays; 3 and 4 on Tuesdays; 5 and 6 on Wednesdays, and so forth.

Under a new scheme being studied, four and not just two numbers will be the basis for banning vehicles, Tolentino said, adding that this system could be patterned after the one implemented in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“In Rio, the scheme bars four numbers: 1, 2, 3, and 4 on Monday; 5, 6, 7, and 8 on Tuesday, and so on,” Tolentino explained. “We are still exploring if it should be done only on Edsa or in the entire Metro Manila. But eventually the traffic volume will be reduced by 40 percent.”

“There’s no timeframe yet” and the Metro Manila Council (MMC), the MMDA’s policymaking body, will discuss it in a meeting on July 24, he added.

But Tolentino stressed the urgency of devising a new traffic scheme for the metropolis, where he said the number of vehicles registered at the Land Transportation Office (LTO) had increased from the time he became MMDA chair in 2010, from 1.9 million to 2.3 million.

Private vehicles also make up 75 percent of the vehicles using Metro Manila roads every day, according to the agency.

The proposed scheme already drew criticism from the head of the Automobile Association of the Philippines (AAP).

Reached for comment, AAP president Gus Lagman said “that’s going to be tough for the motorists. Why should the motorists be the ones to shoulder the government’s failure to enforce traffic rules?”

Business establishments, especially those in the transport sector or which deploy vehicles daily would also have to adjust to the new scheme. “Those which have a fleet of 500 vehicles would need to add 100 more units to be able to meet their business quotas,” Lagman said.

Ordinary motorists would find the new system “too inconvenient,” he said. “What we need is an efficient mass transit system which would encourage people to take public transport instead of private vehicles.”

Quezon City Mayor Herbert “Bistek” Bautista said he “earlier suggest(ed) three numbers instead of four, but we will still discuss this with Chairman Tolentino.”

“But he’s right. Our roads can no longer accommodate the increasing number of vehicles. It is only right to expand the current number coding scheme,” said Bautista, who also heads the MMC’s Special Traffic Committee.