Public transport network system plan for Lipa City, Batangas, Philippines

• Main Author: Caraos, Geowell Neil Gamaliel Rosales
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2023
• Subjects: Transportation—Philippines—Batangas; Transportation Engineering
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdm_civ/28; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etdm_civ/article/1024/viewcontent/Public_Transport_Network_System_Plan_for_Lipa_City_Batangas_Phi2.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

The worsening traffic congestion problem of the primate city Metro Manila in the Philippines is an example of how not to follow its lead of addressing the city’s transport problem when it is already too complex to solve but rather the city has to start early in addressing traffic congestion. The city of Lipa in the Philippines is a medium-sized city that is already starting to experience traffic congestion and needs to confront the issue right away and one sure way of getting results is the improvement of its public transportation system. Years of population and economic growth of the city have increased the transport demand while the city's current public transportation has not kept up with the demand and can be considered as inefficient and unreliable. Lipa City is estimated to generate 147,132 daily trips using the multiple classification analysis (MCA) method. More than one-third of the survey respondents picked motortricycles as their primary mode of transport, followed closely by nearly 30 percent of respondents using jeepneys. Logit models based on revealed preference show that tricycles are the predominant mode of transport with a probability of between 35 to 52 percent, followed by jeepneys with a probability of between 15 and 35 percent. In the stated preference survey, it estimates that a hypothetical BRT system is expected to capture 25 percent of all daily trips in Lipa City. This hypothetical BRT system would be closed or segregated in nature to prevent local traffic from affecting its own travel time and improve its level of service compared to other modes. These modes of transport may not be able to keep up with the demand in the long run given their limited capacities and are not environmentally friendly. Local Government Units (LGUs) like Lipa City are required to come up with Local Public Transport Route Plan (LPTRP) under the Public Utility Vehicle (PUV) modernization program with the government. The need to introduce high-capacity public transport to Lipa City is now to provide commuters with better alternatives before they start to purchase personal vehicles iv such as motorcycles and private cars. Previous transport studies have focused on larger cities with populations greater than one million such as Metro Manila and Cebu City where traffic congestion is now too difficult to address. Now is the time to focus on transport studies in secondary cities, such as Lipa City, to address worsening traffic congestion before they too will become similar to Metro Manila and Cebu City.