LTO no longer registering 2-stroke trikes

CLARK FIELD, Pampanga — After suspending judgment on the fate of some 1.7 million owners of "two-stroke" tricycles nationwide, the government has finally decided not to register them anymore and even ban the importation of such motorcycles in line with the Clean Air Act.

Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza told The STAR in an interview here that the Land Transportation Office (LTO) is no longer registering two-stroke motorcycles, which have been touted as a major source of air pollution.

Ariel Lim, president of the National Confederation of Tricycle Operators and Drivers Associations of the Philippines, said about 1.7 million of the estimated 2.8 million tricycle drivers nationwide drive two-stroke motorcycles.

Two-stroke motorcycles require a mixture of gasoline and oil and are not equipped with enough systems to immediately burn the mixture for complete combustion, thus resulting in more smoke emissions.

Most modern motorcycles, however, have four-stroke engines and are expected to pass gas emission tests, which the LTO now requires for vehicle registration.

Mendoza said he would coordinate with the Department of Trade and Industry to enforce a ban on the importation of two-stroke motorcycles.

Last February, LTO chief Roberto Lastimoso said that public utility two-stroke tricycles would not be phased out, adding that the Clean Air Act has no provision banning any type of vehicle.

The Metro Manila Development Authority initiated the ban on two-stroke motorcycles, triggering protest actions from tricycle drivers’ groups.

Mendoza, however, said the LTO is no longer registering two-stroke motorcycles, although it is not clear whether the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has come up with a standard on measuring hydrocarbons which such motorcycles emit.

While fees for gas emission tests for public utility vehicles are supposed to be uniform nationwide, the fees have yet to be imposed in areas where the LTO still has no emission test equipment.

But private vehicle owners have to comply with such tests through private centers charging P300 for each test.

In registering vehicles in areas where the LTO has no equipment, Lastimoso earlier said the applicant just has to execute an affidavit of undertaking obliging him to submit his vehicle to emission test within 90 days after the equipment is made available in his area.

Emission test fees for public utility vehicles are P40 for tricycles, P90 for jeepneys, and P115 for buses.

Lim earlier said the DENR and the LTO had asked them to coordinate in experiments on a new coconut-based fuel product, which could substitute for mineral-based 2T oil mixed with gasoline in two-stroke motorcycles.

"The product is essentially coconut methyl which is produced locally. It produces cleaner emissions and costs only about P50 per liter as against P65 per liter of 2T oil," Lim said.