Tips: LTO Car Registration Renewal

The 3-year LTO registration for our car expired this year and I have to renew it now every year. I browsed the net to get some tips from fellow motorist who have went thru LTO car registration renewal. There several  detailed write-ups on the net which made it easy for me to go thru the renewal process. Here is one. Here is another one done at LTO Kapitolyo Pasig Office which is very extensive that comes with the procedure, pictures and fees. The renewal process here took 30 minutes at the closing hours of the office.

Here is how I went thru renewal process on a Friday morning.

1. I prepared the necessary documents: Photocopy of OR/CR, CTPL.
2. I had smoke emission test 8am at  a test center along West Drive Kapitolyo.
3. I went to the cashier area, submitted a photo copy of OR/CR.
4. I paid 430Pesos for the smoke emission test.
5. Unfortunately the computers at test center was offline thus I waited for 30minutes before I received emission test results and my Photocopy of OR/CR.
6. I proceeded to LTO Kapitolyo Pasig Office. I paid 20pesos for parking fee.
7. I parked our car in the MV inspection area.
8. I was asked to proceed to window 10 to secure stencil doc. I gave to the inspection aid the stencil doc plus photocopy of OR/CR and CTPL docs.
9. The inspection office completed the stencil doc and attached the photocopy of OR/CR and CTPL documents.
10. I proceeded back to window 10 for evaluation of the documents. The LTO officer approved the documents.
11. I proceeded to a designated evaluator at Window 14 (depends on the ending plate number).
12. I waited for my name to be called.
13. Once my name was called. the renewal documents were returned to me.
14. I lined up at the cashier, submitted my documents and paid a fee of 1,829.60Pesos.
15. I proceed to releasing window, but unfortunately there were no stickers available at that time. I have to check and return to the releasing office once stickers are available.

The whole process took 1 hr on Friday morning wherein I a spent a total of 2,859.60Pesos for renewal of a 2010 sedan for 2013. I read that for some, the total fees are more than 3,000Pesos. I was happy it costed much less and it was due to my CTPL. Let me know thru the comment box if you want to save on your car registration renewal. Also you may want to get the services of AAP.

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.