DOTr mulls gradual increase of public transport capacity

The Department of Transportation (DOTr) is considering a gradual increase in the public transport capacity, following the easing of quarantine restrictions.

In a virtual briefing on Wednesday, Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade said the department has started studies on how public transport capacity could be boosted without compromising health safety standards.

"Naumpisahan na 'yan, meron na kaming tinatawag na pag-aaral at a-approach kami sa IATF na kung puwede dagdagan, say 5%, 10%, and we make it gradual," he said.

(We already started studying that and we will approach the IATF on the possibility of increasing capacity gradually by 5%, 10%.)

Tugade said public transport stakeholders are ready to increase capacity, but the final decision will be made by the Inter-agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID).

At present, public transport is capped at 50% while the NCR Plus bubble—Metro Manila, Cavite, Laguna, Rizal, Bulacan—remains under the general community quarantine (GCQ).

The NCR Plus bubble will remain under general community quarantine until June 30, albeit "with some restrictions" starting June 15 versus "with heightened restrictions" in the previous days.

Just last Friday, there were long queues at the EDSA Bus Carousel Stations, which the DOTr attributed to the weather conditions during the day.

In response, Tugade said the DOTr will revisit the present free ride system to study if it may be expanded to other platforms aside from the EDSA Busway.

The DOTr also pushed the EDSA Busway Consortium to deploy additional units, and said it added more transport marshals and will deploy more rescue skip buses moving forward.

"Be assured that we are on our toes in order to address those causes of inconveniences," Tugade said.—AOL, GMA News