Samar Rep. Edgar Mary Sarmiento has called on the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) and the Land Transportation Office (LTO) to require all city buses plying EDSA to install speed limiters as provided for by the law.
The chairman of the House Committee on Transportation said LTFRB Chairman Martin Delgra and LTO chief Assistant Secretary Edgar Galvante should give the bus companies "a timeline" to install the speed limiters to avoid accidents as a result of overspeeding.
“There is an existing law, itong (this) RA 10916, sana mabigyan po natin ito ng timeline kung kailan po natin ito ma-implement (I hope we can have timeline on when we can fully implement this). The chair would like to suggest to start first with EDSA ang speed limiter natin. We might not have the device at the moment but so as not to come up with an additional burden to the different bus companies, puwede naman siguro nating gawan muna ng manual speed limiter (maybe we can start with the installation of the manual speed limiter),” Sarmiento said during the recent virtual motu proprio probe on the country’s land transportation policies.
Republic Act No. 10916 or the Road Speed Limiter Act of 2016 mandates the fitting of speed limit for PUVs. Covered by the law are all PUVs, excluding taxi, jeepneys, and Transportation Network Vehicle (TNV) service cars; closed commercial vans, cargo haulers, tanker trucks, and company shuttles.
During the House panel hearing, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) General Manager Jojo Garcia said the accidents involving the buses in the carousel lanes cannot be blamed to the barriers, but to the drivers who who went beyond the maximum speed of 50 kilometers per hour.
Procured by the Department of Transportation (DOTr), the barriers were installed to separate the bus carousel lane from the rest of the other vehicle lanes.
According to Garcia, they only recorded six accidents inside the bus carousel lane, out of the 25,000 trips that were made by buses.
Sarmiento said the MMDA’s disclosure that the overspeeding is the main reason of accidents along EDSA’s bus carousel lane should prod the implementing agencies of RA 10916 to implement the law, initially covering EDSA buses.
"Dun sa speed limiter (with respect to speed limiter), kahit na wala pa tayo nung (even though we don’t have yet a) standard device, para sa EDSA muna (let’s start with EDSA), baka puwede manual speed limiter muna (maybe we could have manual speed limiter), habang wala pa 'yung device (while the device is not yet available). Puwede 'yung manual speed limiter na nilalagay sa mga accelerator (We can have the manual speed limiter that can be attached to the accelerator),” he said.
"We also want the LTO and LTFRB to submit a report related to the speed limiter,” he added.