Friday, June 06, 2008 Mandaue council blocks extension of experiment
THE opposition-dominated Mandaue City Council blocked the extension of a traffic rerouting experiment for tricycles and deferred the entry of vehicles owned by a Norkis-affiliated company.
The Traffic Board’s intention in the traffic rerouting experiment is “to lessen the tricycles plying the street, if not to eliminate them eventually,” said a report of the council’s committee on transport.
In that report, Councilor Emil Rosal, chairman of the committee on transport, communication and utilities, also urged the council to approve the ordinance fixing the routes of these tricycles.
That ordinance is up for the second and final readings in next week’s session. It identifies the routes of around 830 tricycles plying Mandaue City streets. It also provides for the return of tricycles to S.B. Cabahug St., where tricycles were banned when the traffic rerouting experiment started.
The council approved and adopted the recommendations submitted by the committee, which has Councilor Victor Biaño as co-chairman and Councilor Alfonso Albaño Jr. as a member.
But Jomar Ostia, in a separate interview, reminded councilors of a 1992 city ordinance banning tricycles from the city’s main roads. Ostia is the executive director of the Traffic Enforcement and Management (Team) and a member of the chief executive’s Traffic Board.
The board has endorsed Spider vehicles to take the tricycles’ place in certain routes. The city, Ostia added, needs operators to serve remote places that tricycles cannot reach, like the areas around the Cebu International Convention Center.
He said there is no problem with the other tricycle drivers’ group that counts at least 782 members, and that only a minority has complained.
The committee revealed that in November last year, Mayor Jonas Cortes informed the council that the Traffic Board will implement a 30-day traffic rerouting experiment for tricycles and public utility jeepneys (PUJ).
Daily income
The experiment began last March 17, but after two weeks, drivers complained their daily income had been reduced drastically.
On April 23, the council called for the termination of the 30-day rerouting experiment, but the board did not heed the request.
Some drivers went back to their old routes but they were apprehended and their licenses, confiscated. The mayor, on May 9, asked for an extension of the experiment period instead.
Then on May 23, 2008 a Norkis Group-affiliated company, Porta Coeli Industrial Company, requested the City Council through Vice Mayor Carlo Fortuna for an
endorsement for a travel line.
Luigi Quisumbing, whose family owns the Norkis Group, was Mayor Cortes’ political ally. He ran for Congress in the May 2007 election but lost.
Porta Coeli will operate, according to the committee report, 30 vehicles and will ply S.B. Cabahug St.—the route once used by tricycles.
The transport committee said that the drivers and the council were not told of the real intentions of the rerouting.
Rosal, in an interview, said he favors a mass transport system, but added the drivers deserve an alternative means of livelihood.
The Traffic Board met yesterday with owners and officials of business firms located in the city’s reclamation area, particularly on the lack of public transportation there.
Ostia assured them that this will be addressed with the entry of vehicles from Porta Coeli, which is awaiting word on its travel line and franchise applications.
Ostia said there is no link between Porta Coeli’s plans and the plight of tricycle drivers.
He reminded drivers that tricycles are not allowed on S.B. Cabahug St. according to the ordinance regulating the operation of tricycles within Mandaue City.
“In a developing city, progress has tradeoffs,” Ostia said. (OCP)
