OPINION: A Month After e-Trike Ban In Manila: Has It Made Manila’s Streets Safer?

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One month after the Philippines’ Land Transportation Workplace (LTO) started strict enforcement of its ban on mild electrical autos alongside main Metro Manila roads, officers have been fast to border the coverage as a win for site visitors order. Fewer apprehensions are being reported. Chosen corridors look like transferring sooner. From the standpoint of conventional site visitors administration, the logic appears easy: take away slower autos from quick roads and congestion improves.

But beneath that narrative lies a extra sophisticated actuality. The ban has surfaced long-standing tensions in Philippine transport coverage, notably the tendency to manage new types of clear mobility utilizing frameworks designed virtually solely for personal automobiles, usually with out amassing the information wanted to guage real-world outcomes.

What’s unfolding on Manila’s roads is much less a query of self-discipline than of whether or not velocity is being mistaken for security, and enforcement for proof.

Pace has been handled as security, with out proof

The LTO’s justification rests on the concept of velocity mismatch. Officers argue that e-bikes and e-trikes, usually working at 25 to 40 kilometers per hour, create rear-end collision dangers when combined with faster-moving autos on the primary roads within the metropolis, corresponding to on EDSA, C-5, and Roxas Boulevard.

By this reasoning, eradicating slower autos restores predictability and reduces accidents. Early enforcement figures have been offered to assist this declare.

Apprehensions reportedly dropped from greater than 100 on the primary day of implementation to fewer than fifty by the top of the primary week. For the company, the decline alerts improved compliance and self-discipline.

Transport analysis, nonetheless, means that the connection between velocity and security is much extra advanced.

Worldwide research persistently present that crash severity is influenced much less by velocity variance than by car mass, highway geometry, and the presence or absence of bodily separation. When lighter autos are faraway from a roadway, common speeds usually improve. Whereas this will cut back minor conflicts, it could possibly additionally elevate the chance of extreme or deadly outcomes when collisions happen.

Up to now, the LTO has not launched comparative crash information to point out whether or not accidents have declined for the reason that ban took impact. There are not any publicly out there figures evaluating January 2026 with the identical interval in 2025, no breakdown of accidents involving mild electrical autos previous to enforcement, and no evaluation of whether or not travel-time enhancements prolong past non-public motorists. Within the absence of such information, enforcement statistics have successfully turn into a stand-in for security outcomes.

Displacement, not discount

What may be inferred from circumstances on the bottom means that the ban has not decreased the demand for mobility. As a substitute, it has redirected it.

The Philippines is estimated to have greater than 1.5 million e-trikes and e-bikes nationwide, lots of them domestically assembled and used every day for commuting, casual transport, and livelihood actions. In Metro Manila, these autos usually perform as first- and last-mile hyperlinks in areas poorly served by jeepneys or buses. When barred from main arteries with out various routes or lanes, riders don’t disappear. They transfer elsewhere.

Stories from barangay site visitors places of work and commuter suggestions point out elevated congestion on secondary and internal roads, notably throughout peak hours. These streets are sometimes narrower, much less regulated, and extra harmful, particularly for pedestrians. From a methods perspective, this raises a crucial query. If threat is merely being shifted from highways to residential streets, can the coverage credibly be described as bettering security?

Riders and operators describe regulation with out transition

Within the absence of official research, a lot of the clearest perception into the ban’s influence has come from the individuals most affected by it. Social media posts from established e-trike and e-bike teams have crammed the knowledge hole left by the dearth of presidency information.

In a single extensively shared Fb submit from a nationwide e-trike operator group, a member wrote that authorities saved saying the ban was about security, however by no means defined the place displaced riders have been anticipated to go. “We’re not racing automobiles,” the submit learn. “We’re attempting to get to work with out paying fares that change each week.”

On X, a Manila-based e-bike supply cooperative described the coverage as exclusion quite than regulation. The group famous that banning mild electrical autos from highways with out constructing lanes or posting clear signage amounted to removing, not administration. One other submit from a metro-wide e-trike rider community targeted on enforcement economics, declaring {that a} single apprehension might wipe out every week’s revenue for a driver already working on skinny margins.

These accounts mirror a broader sentiment that enforcement arrived with out transition. Clear technical requirements, devoted area, and public data campaigns have been largely absent when the ban took impact.

Advocates and trade level to completely different failures

Transport advocacy teams and trade stakeholders agree that the present method is flawed, although they differ on why. AltMobility PH has criticized the coverage as emblematic of car-centric pondering, arguing that it prioritizes the comfort of a minority of motorists on the expense of the bulk who depend on public or casual transport. Of their view, equating emptier highways with safer streets ignores how most Filipinos truly transfer by means of the town.

The Electrical Automobiles Affiliation of the Philippines (Electrical Automobiles Affiliation of the Philippines) has targeted as an alternative on regulatory readability. EVAP has repeatedly identified that the LTO has but to obviously outline classes distinguishing pedal-assist bicycles, low-speed scooters, and heavier passenger e-trikes. With out such definitions, enforcement turns into inconsistent, leaving even compliant riders susceptible to apprehension.

Each views converge on a central problem. Regulation with out clear requirements and infrastructure undermines each security and public belief.

When clear mobility is a matter of survival

The human penalties of the ban have been introduced into sharp reduction by the viral apprehension of an 88-year-old e-trike driver on Roxas Boulevard. The incident resonated extensively not as a result of it was distinctive, however as a result of it captured a well-recognized actuality. For a lot of Filipinos, mild electrical autos will not be experimental expertise or life-style selections. They’re instruments for survival.

In transport-poor areas, e-trikes usually present the one reasonably priced hyperlink to hospitals, markets, and colleges. Passengers affected by the ban have reported longer walks, increased prices, and fewer choices. These burdens will not be mirrored in site visitors move statistics, but they form on a regular basis life in ways in which enforcement tallies can’t seize.

As one commenter wrote beneath a extensively shared video, automobiles may lose a couple of minutes when site visitors slows, however e-trike customers lose their solely trip.

Sequencing, not shortcuts

Cities which have efficiently built-in mild electrical autos are inclined to comply with a constant sample. They outline car courses, redesign streets to accommodate combined speeds, handle car velocity quite than entry alone, and implement guidelines solely after alternate options exist. The Philippine expertise has largely reversed this sequence.

From a clear transport perspective, the issue just isn’t electrification, however governance. Mild electrical autos cut back emissions, noise, and working prices, whereas increasing entry for populations underserved by standard transit. Treating them primarily as obstacles to automobile move dangers undermining these advantages.

Till complete crash information, travel-time research throughout all modes, and displacement analyses are made public, the e-bike ban will stay troublesome to justify as a security measure. For now, it seems much less like a fastidiously deliberate transition and extra like a well-recognized response: making use of twentieth-century site visitors logic to twenty-first-century mobility instruments.