MANILA — The Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) has delayed the applications of new transportation network vehicle services (TNVS) units from February 5 to March 5.
This after Department of Transportation (DOTr) Secretary Arthur Tugade ordered a review of the LTFRB’s memorandum which imposed a common supply base for TNVS units at 45,700 nationwide.
DOTr would create a team to evaluate the number of request bookings per day and the number of served and unserved rides of transportation network companies (TNCs).
The transportation department and LTFRB will start monitoring within the next few weeks the number of booking requests received by TNCs. This will include served and unserved requests as well as other factors affecting the supply of TNVS such as number coding, maintenance schedules, and working hours of drivers. Such will determine an objective number for the common supply base which will be based also on the official list of accredited TNVS from Grab, Uber and U-Hop.
For its part, Grab is appealing to the LTFRB that the cap on the TNVS units be increased to 75,000 as setting a limit would hamper their ability to deliver transport services to their passengers.
“I think 75,000 would be the number of unique drivers on the road right now. So yung lumabas na 45,000 medyo nagulat kami (So we were shocked when LTFRB came up with a 45,000 supply cap on TNVS),” Grab Philippines country head Brian Cu said in a press briefing held in Quezon City Tuesday.
Cu further said that LTFRB should consider using its master list of active drivers to be prioritized during the applications.
Under LTFRB Memorandum Circular 2018-003, the common base of 45,700 TNVS units is broken down as follows:
Metro Manila — 45,000 TNVS units
Metro Cebu — 500 TNVS units
Pampanga — 200 TNVS units
The cap on TNVS units was determined from relevant data given by the leading TNCs, taking into consideration churning rate, percentage of full-time and part-time TNVS, peak and off-peak hours and average daily bookings. (PNA)
