Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista has pressed for the creation of special designated lanes for trucks and tricycles to improve the city’s traffic flow and at the same time enhance air quality on QC’s major roads and thoroughfares.
The Mayor called on the city council and the department of public order and safety to study the proposal, a move that he considered instrumental in making QC a green and healthy community.
“Economic growth and urban development represent our collective ideals. But let us set and strictly implement the parameters that will allow urbanization to prosper without compromising our environmental quality,” the Mayor said.
In the case of tricycles, the Mayor cited as imperative the need to provide them with alternative routes to prevent them from plying along major roads like the Mindanao and Commonwealth Avenues.
Aside from the creation of special lanes, the Mayor said the city is also open to the possibility of allowing the use of renewable energy and green technologies for the city’s transport sector to mitigate the ill-effects of pollution to public health and safety.
A World Bank report said air pollution was a major cause of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases in the Philippines, costing the country P7.6 billion annually. A study made by the UP College of Medicine further showed that more than 50 percent of the medicines sold in the country are accounted for by respiratory ailments.
Buttressing this finding, the UP College of Public Health showed that the prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD is 32.5 percent among jeepney drivers, 16.4 percent among air conditioned bus drivers, and 13.8 percent among commuters. Precy/ Ej/ Maureen Quiñones, PAISO
