Metro Manila Number Coding

By November 23, 2012, it would be the 17th anniversary of Metro Manila  Unified Vehicular Volume Reduction Program (UVVRP), or more popularly named Number Coding. It's now a very very old solution to Metro Manila's traffic congestion woes. At its conception in 1995, there are about 1 million motor vehicles in MetroManila that will be addressed by the number coding.  However over the years, motor vehicle registrations have increased more than 50%, ie 1.7 million in 2010. Do you think the number coding will be able to control this figure?

Based from my experience during the early years of implementation, the number coding really reduced the traffic volume on EDSA. However, the coding scheme also benefited car dealers as people resorted to buying their second cars for the days that their primary car is prohibited from the roads. Maybe that's reason for the huge increase in motor vehicle registrations. What makes it worse today is the easy affordability now of new cars and the availability of mini/sub-compact cars.

Well the good news is that the new government today are looking at long term infrastructure to address traffic congestion like the proposed elevated EDSA, expansions of the light rail transit networks.

Actually there was a comment before, that you would not even fit all the vehicles on the roads of MetroManila because of the huge volume. Even in private residences alone, people have their 2nd/3rd/4th vehicles parked along the side of the road. As a result, the two-lane road reduces to one lane. The sad part is these owners of the parked vehicles along the road even put up no parking signs as if they own that part of the road.

For me, the real reason for our road traffic congestion is there is too much motor vehicles in the Metro. The government should look into minimizing the increase of vehicles. Maybe we should follow the likes of Singapore who auctions the license to own motor vehicles. In Hongkong, you can only own a motor vehicle if you have your own parking area. This is what I like most so we can have our roads cleared of illegally parked cars.