Industry group slams truck ban policies

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP) has expressed concern about the “delivery chaos” caused by the truck ban and route limitations imposed by government agencies, stressing that this was not the solution to easing the traffic woes in Metro Manila.

In a statement, ECCP president Michael Raeuber noted that the current truck ban imposed by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) created “a reduction in operating time, increases utilization beyond the 70 to 80 percent at peak times, and creates the requirement for more trucks to ply the roads to move accumulated cargoes.”

“To make things worse, the City of Manila threatened to effectively limit port working time to a few hours in the evening, which would create incredible peaks in demand, increase utilization (eventually to 100 percent), increase the required number of trucks in the chain, and eventually shut down trade. That would be close to economic sabotage. At the end of last week, the City of Manila changed tack slightly and opened a window for trucks from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Does that make sense? Will that improve things? Sad to say, no,” Raeuber commented.

The city government of Manila implemented on Monday a new truck ban policy in the city.

Raeuber said the solution to the perceived truck problem was to reduce the so-called peaking factors, which refer to the policies that require more trucks to be in circulation, and the need for truckers to park their vehicles while waiting for the bans to end.

“The single best solution for all of the aforementioned issues is to eliminate all truck bans completely and formulate a proper, coordinated and efficient 24-hour truck route regulation system. This will benefit the entire country and will, to everyone’s surprise, actually reduce the traffic impact of cargo trucks,” Raeuber added.

Over the short term, the ECCP also proposed to remove empty containers from the port area by disallowing their storage there. It was reported that 35 percent of the truck traffic was being caused by those that do not carry any cargo.

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