Among the biggest expenses of motorists and traders are the pass-through fees and expressway tolls they must pay to keep their vehicles on the road.
This prompted President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. recently to suspend the “pass-through” fees local government units collect from truckers transporting merchandise through their localities on national roads.
Executive Order 41 was issued on 25 September, prohibiting LGUs from collecting pass-through fees from all vehicles transporting goods on national roads and other thoroughfares running through their localities but not constructed or funded by them.
“We are doing this to (implement) the ease of doing business and to lower transportation costs,” the President said.
The LGUs are also prohibited from collecting sticker fees, discharging fees, delivery fees, market fees, toll fees, entry fees, and mayor’s permit fees from those vehicles.
This has made other motorists wonder about obtaining relief from high prices if the tolls on expressways were likewise suspended.
The start of the longest Christmas season in the world always equates to lengthy queues at the entrances and exits of toll highways, elevated or not.
The big business operators of these roadways, who rake in massive amounts daily from motorists anxious to avoid the fabled road jams of Metro Manila, should guarantee efficiency in return.
Among those who frequently use the supposedly premium roads, for instance, the usual problems aside from the frequent long vehicle queues at the gates are the “cavities” on the roadways that golf players compare to divots on the greens.
At the South Luzon Expressway, operated by San Miguel Corp., a frequent traveler said he regularly spends a sizable amount to keep his vehicle in good condition as driving through the damaged areas causes regular stability issues.
A road expert said that since taxpayers already pay the government to provide efficient infrastructure, including roads, motorists should question the tolls since this may constitute double taxation.
Nonetheless, the expert said operators must comply with a minimum performance standard to protect the public who use the toll roads.
For instance, the tollways holding up travel requires that motorists be compensated.
The road expert said the government saves motorists from inconvenience when they pass through the costly road systems.
But in the implementing rules and regulations on the contactless toll payments of the Toll Regulatory Board, it is provided that motorists who are unnecessarily delayed while passing through the tollways should be given free access.
The section governing the toll collection system provides: “Should conditions arise that the electronic toll collection system malfunctions or an operational problem occur, artificial or otherwise, the toll facility operator shall exert all efforts necessary to address the situation under the standard protocols in the operations manual, acceptable industry practices and other means to maintain a continuous flow of traffic, among others. Should such a situation persist, causing an extraordinary queuing length of 1 kilometer for Class 1 and 2 vehicles and 1.2 kilometers for Class 3 vehicles approaching the toll plaza, the toll barriers shall be raised for at least five minutes, allowing vehicles toll-free pass-through until the traffic flow normalizes.”
By the same token, there should be a penalty for malfunctioning RFIDs since, at times, motorists are required to show proof that they have a valid RFID chip, causing long queues to form behind them and chaos to follow.
The government had even required operators to put an interoperability system in place, which requires only one RFID for all the expressways.
The operators, according to the Daily Tribune source, blame each other for the failure to have a unified system, accusing each other of having outdated equipment.
Motorists ask: “Why not fix it?”