Parking fees at P20 per hour by Monday

CEBU, Philippines - Starting next Monday the City Traffic Operations Management will be collecting P20 from motorists for every hour they park their vehicles in various designated roadside parking areas of the city.

This after the Cebu City Council already approved the increase of the hourly parking rate from P15 to P20.

CITOM executive officer Rafael Christopher Yap said their parking fee collections reached P33.2 million in 2010, and P34.3 million last year with the parking fee rates still at P15 per hour.

With the increase of the parking fee CITOM may be able to collect P11 million more in revenue this year.

Based on the statistics presented by Yap to the media, it was learned that of the P61.3 million total collections of CITOM last year more than half of it came from parking fees because only P12.4 million was collected from the fines of erring drivers.

There were 212,159 apprehensions of erring drivers in Cebu City for various traffic violations last year that were issued with traffic citation tickets (TCT) while there were also 17,398 apprehensions issued with temporary operators permit (TOP).

Only the fines paid by drivers issued with TCT will go to the city’s coffers while TOP fines go to the national government.

It was Councilor Ritchie Osmeña, chairman of the City Council’s traffic management committee, who suggested that the parking fee rates will be increased from P15 to P20 for every hour of parking.

Councilor Noel Eleuterio Wenceslao, vice chairman of the committee on traffic management, said CITOM should also help ensure that the vehicles parked in the city’s designated parking areas are always safe.

Wenceslao admitted that the proposal of Osmeña to increase the parking fees is not only for CITOM to earn more, but also to discourage the motorists to park their vehicles in roads for long periods.

When a public hearing was conducted on the proposal to increase parking fees a few months ago nobody showed up to oppose it. – (FREEMAN)