Prioritizing public utility vehicles (PUVs) during rush hour traffic?
In the absence of a workable and legally enforced road sharing scheme and unless the majority of the public ride on bikes, skates, skateboards or jog to work and school, commuters and pedestrians should be prioritized over motorists, bicyclists and skateboarders and others who have the luxury of their own vehicles since they avail of aging and unreliable mass transportation.
Antonio Inton Jr., board member of the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB), pitched the idea of banning private vehicles on major thoroughfares during rush hour traffic to free up the roads for public utility vehicles.
With more Filipinos buying cars, the road space is slowly being constricted for commuters and the bicyclists, pedestrians and others who can’t afford to buy their own vehicles.
Buying cars has been made easier to the middle class through the promotional offers of banks and financial institutions who offer easier payment schemes and car dealers are only too happy to oblige to the terms if only to see their vehicles off the ramps and out into the roads which remain either narrow and small or have been damaged by wear and tear through the years due to poor maintenance by the government.
Inton’s proposal is supported – not surprisingly – by PUV operators and drivers who will benefit if adopted.
But its flaw is that the current state of mass transportation leaves much to be desired.
For far too often, we’ve received complaints about how passenger jeepneys hog the roads and load and unload passengers without warning and even in the middle of the road to the chagrin of motorists and even taxis and pedestrians who simply want to walk to their destination.
Thus jeepney operators see the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) mass transport system as a threat to their livelihood and possibly an end to their cavalier ways on the road.
With a dedicated network of passenger terminals and a defined route scheme in place, the BRT may somehow help ease the traffic congestion in Cebu City.
But city residents shouldn’t pin all their hopes on the project since it is but one of the many solutions to the traffic congestion.
While the road networks of Cebu City and other Metro Cebu local governments can certainly use major improvements, its officials should seriously consider road share schemes that aren’t dependent on these projects and rather complement them in the event they are completed.
In that respect, LGUs should continually work and even spearhead these road share schemes with the active participation of stakeholders and the riding public.