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19 November 2022
The Move As One Coalition is gravely concerned about the deaths of 6 people and the injuries of 13 persons resulting from 9 road crashes on or near the EDSA Busway. It urges the government to invest in raising the safety and quality of the EDSA Busway and to ensure that all road users arrive alive at their destinations.
November 20, 2022, Sunday, marks the annual World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. The Move As One Coalition takes this opportunity to pause and remember all people who have been killed and seriously injured on the world’s roads.
In 2020, 8,017 people, or 22 persons a day, died in a “transport accident” in the Philippines, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority. (“Accident” and “road crash” are often used to describe the same event, but the latter is the more accurate term. Accidents can’t be reasonably foreseen or avoided, while a “crash,” on the other hand, is the result of “choices made and risks disregarded.”)
The Coalition asserts that no one should die or get injured in preventable road crashes on or near the EDSA Busway. From November 11, 2020, to November 2, 2022, 6 people have died, and 13 have been injured in 9 road crashes involving the buses themselves or vehicles crashing into the concrete barriers separating the EDSA Busway from private and other public transport, according to various reports.
The Coalition urges the government to investigate the causes of said road crashes and to invest in measures that will raise the safety, quality, accessibility, and capacity of the EDSA Busway so that all road users arrive safely and efficiently at their destinations. Such measures include building at-grade crosswalks, reducing speed limits or installing traffic lights with countdown timers near these crosswalks, widening the busway lanes, using safer barriers, introducing BRT-ready vehicles with doors on the correct side, and providing proper training for bus drivers.
With a relatively low investment cost and short implementation timeframe (compared to rail development), a project to upgrade and expand the EDSA Busway should be the top mass transit priority of the Marcos administration.
Making only small and piecemeal investments in the EDSA Busway, apart from being wasteful, has already cost people their lives.
The Coalition also calls for the strict implementation of Republic Act No. 10586, or the Anti-Drunk and Drugged Driving Act of 2013. The deadliest crash along the EDSA Busway on February 18, 2022, involved a driver who was under the influence of alcohol. Three people died in the crash.
The Philippines is bound by the Sustainable Development Goals, including SDG target 11.2: “By 2030 provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities and older person.”
Last June, the country reaffirmed its commitment to the Political Declaration of the High-Level Meeting on Improving Global Road Safety and the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030 in a statement. Ms. Leila C. Lora-Santos, Minister, Permanent Mission of the Republic of the Philippines to the United Nations, said:
“The new paradigm in the movement of men and things must follow a simple principle ‘Those who have less in wheels must have more in the road.’ For this purpose, the Philippine transport system shall favor non-motorized locomotion and collective transportation systems (emphasis supplied).
It is our goal to create a universal transportation ecosystem that caters to the needs and safety of all road users, especially for people with limited mobility, children, and other vulnerable groups. The Philippines has been advancing this objective through the Philippine Road Safety Action Plan 2017 -2022, which is a comprehensive and inclusive plan that adopted a vision of zero road traffic death (emphasis supplied), with an interim target to reduce the road death rate by at least 20 percent by 2022.” #