P250 per entry congestion charge will make Baguio more expensive than London. How?
The plan of Baguio City to implement P250 congestion charge each time a vehicle enters the City Business District will make the city more expensive than London.
To elaborate the comparison, London congestion charge is just £15 per day. This means a driver will pay the charge only once a day, no matter how many times the car will enter the congestion charge zone. £15 is also just over an hour pay of an ordinary worker. The minimum pay in London or UK is £11.44 per hour. Residents within the Congestion charge are also exempted.
In Baguio, the proposed congestion charge is P250 per entry. P250 is more than half of the daily minimum wage which is P430/ roughly P60 per hour. P250 is more than 4 hours pay of a minimum wage worker. If the driver enters the City Business District 10x in a day, the driver will be charged P2,500.00. If a driver needs to go inside the City Business district once a day, everyday, it means he needs to pay P7,500.00 per month or P90,000.00 per year.
Roughly speaking, 5,000 vehicles entering the city each day, guarantees P1,250,000.00 income for the city per day or P37,500,000 a month or nearly half billion pesos a year. More than enough fund for a candidate to campaign for a national position.
If this is implemented, Baguio City will be more expensive and more stressful than London. It is a very lucrative income-generating scheme that will be masked as a solution to traffic.
If a solution to the traffic condition is the only reason, why not try banning all private vehicles entering the City Business district and only allow PUJ/ PUV as a common transport to all residents, tourists, rich and poor just like London? Not a very expensive cruel P250 Congestion Charge.
THE CORDILLERA CONNECTION 