GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews / 28 Nov) – The city government is pushing for the full implementation by next year of a new management scheme for the operations of tricycles in the city’s 26 barangays.
Lawyer Doan Balboa, executive assistant of the City Mayor’s Office, said Thursday they are currently in the process of formulating a comprehensive tricycle management scheme to set in order the city’s public transportation system.
She said such measure is the main focus of the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) that they are crafting for Articles 19 and 20 or the operations of tricycles of Ordinance No. 37 of the city’s Comprehensive Land Transportation and Traffic Code.
Balboa said they already completed the initial draft of the IRR and the consultations with various sectors are ongoing to fine tune its provisions.
She said the IRR will mainly clarify questions and misconceptions regarding the operations of tricycles, especially on the clustering and their passage in routes traversing the national highways and other major roads.
The tricycles will be divided in four color-coded clusters—red, green, pink and white—and with specific routes assigned, she said.
Balboa said they will adopt a new fare matrix for tricycles, with the minimum rate set at P10 per passenger and provide a “maximum allowable fare” per cluster to address concerns on overcharging by some drivers.
In terms of the routes, she said the IRR will set the designated areas in the national highways where the tricycles will be allowed to pass as well as the transfer areas for jeepneys and other public utility vehicles.
“There will be exceptions for some routes that covers portions of the national highway but tricycles will not be allowed to pick up passengers in these areas,” she said in a radio interview.
Tricycles are prohibited from operating in national highways as provided for in the public transportation omnibus franchising guidelines and Republic Act 4136 or the Land Transportation and Traffic Code.
The Department of the Interior and Local Government’s Memorandum Circular 2007-01 also bans tricycles from plying in national highways “utilized by four-wheel vehicles greater than four tons and where normal speed exceeds 40 km. per hour.”
Citing a directive issued by City Mayor Ronnel Rivera, Balboa said they are targeting to come up with the final IRR before the end of the year.
“Once completed and approved, we can implement it already because it is based on the ordinance,” she said.
A World Bank-funded study conducted in 2014 by the League of Cities of the Philippines showed that over 42,000 tricycles had been plying various routes in the city.
Around 30,000 of these are “trisikads” or scooters with attached sidecars and the remaining 12,000 are standard six-seater tricycles.
The study, which was facilitated by the City Economic Management and Cooperative Development Office, showed that the ideal number of tricycles in the city should only be 9,000 units. (MindaNews)
