Excellencies,
Colleagues,
The Philippines reaffirms its commitment to the Political Declaration of the High-Level Meeting on Improving Global Road Safety and the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030.
The new paradigm in the movement of men and things must follow a simple principle “Those who have less in wheels must have more in the road.” For this purpose, the Philippine transport system shall favor non-motorized locomotion and collective transportation systems.
It is our goal to create a universal transportation ecosystem that caters to the needs and safety of all road users, especially for people with limited mobility, children and other vulnerable groups. The Philippines has been advancing this objective through the Philippine Road Safety Action Plan 2017-2022, which is a comprehensive and inclusive plan that adopted a vision of zero road traffic death, with an interim target to reduce the road death rate by at least 20 percent by 2022.
This national plan focuses on strategies under the five pillars, namely, Road Safety Management, Safer Roads and Mobility, Safer Vehicles, Safe Road Users and Post- Crash Response; and includes concrete programs such as the modernization of private utility vehicles, the motor vehicle inspection and the reactivation of the Committee on the Harmonization of Vehicle Standards and Regulations.
Excellencies,
The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the need to invest in multimodal transport systems as necessary restrictions imposed to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 have driven the shift to active modes of transport. As such, non-motorized transport needs to be made safer especially in major thoroughfares where infrastructures accord priority to motor vehicles.
Our National Transport Policy gives priority to active transportation in the overall framework of the transport policy by developing facilities that will enable the efficient and safe utilization of non-motorized transport.
The Philippine Government established a total of 563 kilometers of bike lanes all over the country and continue to monitor the physical conditions of bike lane facilities to ensure that they are well-maintained. The Government also aims to enhance pedestrian mobility, access and safety around key rail stations by build a 5-kilometer elevated walkway to and from the stations.
Finally, the Philippines calls for the harmonization of road-data related definition and collection to better understand compare policies that help reduce road-related fatalities, greater knowledge sharing and exchange of best practices on road safety. Our National Transport Policy has prescribed the Department of Transportation as the repository of a database system for transport-related data. This will help in a more efficient transport data collection and management to assist effective formulation of policies to minimize road- related accidents and/or fatalities.
Thank you.