Members of the Quezon City-Department of Public Order and Safety-Green Transport Division (DPOS-GTD), ride bikes inside a designated special lane along Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City, during the dry run of the Bike Bus Program on Aug.30, 2024. Maria Tan, ABS-CBN News

MANILA — Transportation reform advocacy group Move As One Coalition on Sunday called on government to spend more on public and active transportation and to charge motorists for congestion to help people walk and commute more.

The group made the call on World Car-Free Day.

Move As One said that government should build more at-grade pedestrian crossings, high-quality walkways and better ramps for wheelchair users.

Citing a 2020 Social Weather Stations survey, the group said 44% of Filipinos walk to work.

“Yet pedestrians — including persons with disabilities, the elderly, pregnant women, and children — remain an aferthought in the design and planning of road infrastructure,” the group said, citing a substandard wheelchair ramp at the Philam Station of the EDSA Busway and “unfriendly and inconveniently located footbridges.”

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Move as One added that the proposed 2025 national budget should have more funding for active transport, which includes putting up protected lanes for cyclists and users of other modes of active transport like e-bikes and e-scooters.

The proposed budget bill has P60 million allocated for active transport, down from P1 billion in the 2024 national budget, which, the group said “will discourage people from walking and biking, as the lack of safe infrastructure will put them in harm’s way [and] they will be exposed to a greater risk of injury or death in a road crash.”

The use of bicycles and other forms of active transport, as well as the designation of bike lanes in Metro Manila’s cities, saw a boom during the pandemic lockdowns but the relaxation of restrictions as the threat posed by COVID-19 decreased has led to the removal of many of the bike lanes.

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Government should also restore funding for service contracting — a government subsidy to public transportation operators — that is said could “transform our shambolic public transportation system into a high-quality service.”

Without service contracting, operators have to compete with each other for passengers at the cost of passenger safety and of compliance with government performance standards, the group said.

“It makes no sense that the proposed budget for the program in the 2025 [National Expenditure Program] is zero,” it said.

The group is also proposing a congestion charge in certain areas of Metro Manila as has been done in London and in Singapore, saying congestion charging is among the most effective measures that cities in Europe have used in recent decades to discourage car use in city centers.

“In light of the costly and significant delays in foreign-assisted projects, such as the Cebu Bus Rapid Transit System — approved by the NEDA Board in 2014 but still under construction — congestion charging is worth exploring as a stable source of additional funding for public transportation and road infrastructure that would make it easier for people to shift to more sustainable transport modes,” the group said.

Move As One has been pressing the government on its declaration in the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028 that “pedestrians and cyclists will be accorded highest priority in the hierarchy of road users.”

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