Authorities in Quezon City have been consistently cracking down on bike-lane violators. From motorcycle riders entering the marked lanes to illegally parked vehicles, everybody gets a ticket. Over in Manila City, though, it appears that vehicles are allowed to park within bike lanes—and their owners are even charged for parking. Dang.
The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) discovered this during one of its road-clearing operations in the city as part of its push to clean up school zones before face-to-face classes resume. Both private cars and public utility vehicles were parked on the side of the road and on the bike lanes, and the parking attendants there—with ordinances and permits on hand—insisted that the practice was legal.
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We’ve been monitoring the MMDA’s road-clearing ops for a while now, and this is by far one of the most complicated ones we’ve seen yet. What the agency did instead was to tickets or tow all vehicles whose owners supposedly haven’t paid any fees to the parking attendants.
To no surprise, it wasn’t just illegally parked vehicles the MMDA had to deal with. The agency’s personnel had to clean up all sorts of obstructions as well, including a dilapidated and apparently soaked-up van left rotting on the side of the road.
Sigh...Manila City and its parking woes. First, there was that incident with the illegal parking attendant, and now this. What on earth could we be seeing next?
