An online petition on Change.org urging the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority to scrap a proposal to expand the “number-coding” traffic reduction scheme and instead get rid of buses that don’t have franchises has received more than 1,700 signatures so far.
According to Dong Magsajo and Ira Panganiban who started the online petition, thousands of illegal buses on Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue are stealing space on the road “from every law-abiding citizen of Metro Manila.” They add the proposal to ban cars with license plate numbers that end on a certain digit from using EDSA two days a week will not be a solution to traffic.
“Our coding scheme has been revised several times and it never succeeded. The rich people only bought more cars to get around the scheme. They can and will do it again. The first step they must take should be to disallow the thousands of colorum buses. That alone will free up a huge amount of space and will drastically improve traffic flow in Metro Manila,” they said on the petition.
The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority and the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board have begun apprehending and impounding colorum, or illegal, buses and taxi cabs on EDSA.
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Photo: Patrick Roque
