Street as parking lot for private vehicles

We appreciate Neal Cruz’s Feb. 7 column (“Too many vehicles, too few streets,” Opinion). We agree with him.

In fact, we are facing the problem inside our gated Barangay Saint Ignatius, Quezon City (District 3). Here, the streets are too few for too many vehicles. And the barangay council has designated four of our streets, which the Quezon City government has already widened, as one-way streets.

Making the situation worse, many residents here, including barangay officials, have made the streets a parking lot for vehicles they own in their personal capacity, in effect appropriating public property as an extension of private property. (And some of them own several vehicles.) We know there’s a law against this, but enforcement is a problem.

May we ask Cruz if he has raised this issue with legislators? We will be behind him should he campaign for the passage of a law that would not allow the registration of a vehicle unless its owner can show proof that he has a carport for it. A private vehicle without a carport is no different from a colorum bus without a terminal.

Also, many car owners get two or more vehicles so they can avoid the “number coding” system being imposed by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority. Private vehicles, carrying only one or two people, occupy most of our highways. Then we all complain of traffic congestion.

We need to get back our streets. We get the country we deserve.

—ADORA PADLA,

adorapadla@ymail.com