Aside from the premium airport bus service, the transportation department also launched a new batch of city buses that will serve the general commuting public better, especially to persons with disabilty.
With a vision to slowly improve transportations services within Metro Manila, the Department of Transportation and Communications introduces new buses for the point-to-point (P2P) bus service that will have a low floor height with its hydraulic kneeling function and a retractable boarding and alighting ramp for PWDs.
Like other P2P buses, the new buses will also have GPS, CCTV and free Wi-Fi onboard. Interestingly, it’s also listed to have a tap-and-go payment scheme, like the Beep card of MRT/LRT, but we still don’t have concrete news regarding the expansion of the said system to city buses.
Ayala Land recently won the bid for the Integrated Transport System Project – South Terminal (“ITS South Project”), conducted by the Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC). ALI will be awarded with a 35-year concession agreement to build and operate the ITS South Project and will likewise have the right to develop and operate commercial leasing facilities on the same 5.57-hectare former Food Terminal Inc. property on which the future transport terminal will be built.
The site of the ITS South Project is right next to ARCA South, where ALI is developing an integrated mixed-use estate. It is estimated that up to 4,000 buses and 160,000 passengers will pass through the ITS South Project from SLEX everyday. Construction will begin by May 2016 and is expected to be completed and ready for operation by October 2017.
The dance between Land Transportation Franchising & Regulatory Board (LTFRB) and Uber has been around for quite a while now with LTFRB wanting to shut down the car service company due to lack of proper accreditation, among other things. Fast forward to just recently, LTFRB announced that it will hold a consultation of sorts regarding new franchises for a car service called Premium Taxi. Could the two instances be just a coincidence?
Late last month, LTFRB on its page posted an invitation for interested parties for a “public consultation” that will talk about the issuance of new franchises for Premium Taxi. Premium Taxi, according to them, is a car service that requires a “four- or five-door automobile, sedan type, with engine displacement of 2000cc or higher (or its equivalent, if electric-, hybrid-, or alternate fuel-Powered vehicle)” that comes with the following operating conditions as per DOTC:
1. The operator must have at least twenty (20) premium taxi units in his/her fleet;
2. All vehicles must be brand-new at the time of franchise application;
3. All vehicles must be in color set by the LTFRB (Note: It is proposed that the color will be black);
4. All vehicles shall have a maximum age of 7 years;
5. All vehicles must be equipped with a GPS vehicle tracking and navigation device;
6. All vehicles must be equipped with an on-board electric taxi fare payment device capable of processing payments made with credit card or debit card;
7. The operator must have a facility for booking and dispatching by way of an online or smartphone-based application; and
8. The operator must have his/her own workshop and depot with a space of at least 15 sq.m. per vehicle.
Interested parties are cordially invited to a public consultation on Friday, July 24, 10:00 at 4th Floor, LTFRB Bldg.,…
With these happenings, netizens can’t help but think that the reason why Uber (and even GrabCar) have been under fire and are being kept under the radar of LTFRB and DOTC was because of this pending project that they were planning from beginning.
The dance between Land Transportation Franchising & Regulatory Board (LTFRB) and Uber has been around for quite a while now with LTFRB wanting to shut down the car service company due to lack of proper accreditation, among other things. Fast forward to just recently, LTFRB announced that it will hold a consultation of sorts regarding new franchises for a car service called Premium Taxi. Could the two instances be just a coincidence?
Late last month, LTFRB on its page posted an invitation for interested parties for a “public consultation” that will talk about the issuance of new franchises for Premium Taxi. Premium Taxi, according to them, is a car service that requires a “four- or five-door automobile, sedan type, with engine displacement of 2000cc or higher (or its equivalent, if electric-, hybrid-, or alternate fuel-Powered vehicle)” that comes with the following operating conditions as per DOTC:
1. The operator must have at least twenty (20) premium taxi units in his/her fleet;
2. All vehicles must be brand-new at the time of franchise application;
3. All vehicles must be in color set by the LTFRB (Note: It is proposed that the color will be black);
4. All vehicles shall have a maximum age of 7 years;
5. All vehicles must be equipped with a GPS vehicle tracking and navigation device;
6. All vehicles must be equipped with an on-board electric taxi fare payment device capable of processing payments made with credit card or debit card;
7. The operator must have a facility for booking and dispatching by way of an online or smartphone-based application; and
8. The operator must have his/her own workshop and depot with a space of at least 15 sq.m. per vehicle.
Interested parties are cordially invited to a public consultation on Friday, July 24, 10:00 at 4th Floor, LTFRB Bldg.,…
With these happenings, netizens can’t help but think that the reason why Uber (and even GrabCar) have been under fire and are being kept under the radar of LTFRB and DOTC was because of this pending project that they were planning from beginning.
Yesterday, in a phone patch interview for the morning show Unang Hirit, the Land Transportation Office (LTO) chief and Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) Assistant Secretary Alfonso “Aljun” Tan claimed that the agency was never delayed in issuing car plates for newly-registered vehicles.
During the interview, Tan said that the LTO has been able to issue Official Receipt (OR), Certification of Registration (CR), as well as the car plates within seven days, provided that the necessary documents have already been forwarded to the agency.
He added that car dealers should already have the Certificate of Stock Report (CSR) on hand by the time the importer and manufacturer ships the vehicles.
“Yung Certificate of Stock Report ay issued din ho ng LTO sa mga manufacturers at importers. Kasi kung titignan niyo po ang batas, dapat by the time na mapadala ng manufacturer o importer ang sasakyan sa isang dealer, dapat may kasama narin na CSR. Ang nangyayari, nauuna ang sasakyan, nahuhuli ang dokumento,” Tan said.
With that being said, Tan believes that there’s really no excuse for car owners to travel without registration and car plate, and that both the DOTC and LTO were implementing the law when they re-imposed the “No-Plate, No-Travel” policy at the beginning of this month.
Under the new LTO rule, car owners who are unable to provide the necessary registration documents will be fined with Php10,000 and an additional Php1,000 for those who will be caught driving an unregistered vehicle.
On the other hand, car owners who are able to show the OR and CR but are travelling without a license plate will still be fined with Php5,000 for the said offense.
The “No Plate, No Travel” policy was slammed by the motoring community and several organizations, including the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) which earlier stated, through Chairman Francis Tolentino, that the policy is “unconstitutional” and that the agency will not cooperate with the LTO in enforcing it.
While not going as far as calling the policy unconstitutional, representatives from various organizations such as Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines Inc. (CAMPI), the Automobile Association Philippines (AAP), as well as Richie Javier, the general manager of Ford Global City and Ford Manila have expressed their respective dismay over the policy.
Both Javier and CAMPI’s President Rommel Gutierrez are not at all on board with the LTO Chief’s claim that the agency was never late in giving out license plates. In their respective statements, they told the GMA New Online folks that dealers and new car owners should not be penalized for LTO’s shortcoming.
Javier said that “they (LTO) couldn’t process any registrations because the system was not up, and naturally, it will create a backlog,” pertaining to the system upgrade that agency has done from January of this year until the midway point of February. The LTO also did not process any registration on the latter part of December to give way for the Christmas break which, according to Javier, all of the backlog started.
