ROAD safety cannot be outsourced to one agency alone. Yet in Western Visayas, that is exactly what seems to be happening as the Land Transportation Office (LTO) takes the lead in reviewing and preparing the ban on e-bikes and e-trikes along national highways — while many local government units (LGUs) remain on the sidelines.
The LTO is doing its part. It is reviewing policy, fine-tuning guidelines, and rolling out a region-wide information drive to prepare commuters for a major shift in how they move. But road safety does not begin and end with national highways, nor does it rest solely on national agencies. It is, at its core, a local governance matter.
In Western Visayas, outside Iloilo City and a few urban centers, national highways double as main streets. They cut through towns, barangays, markets, schools, and residential areas. For many LGUs, these highways are the backbone of daily life — yet they are also the most dangerous roads for light electric vehicles and pedestrians.
This is precisely why LGUs cannot afford to be passive observers.
Passing local ordinances is essential. Municipalities and cities must clearly define where e-bikes and e-trikes can and cannot operate, identify safe routes, and impose reasonable speed and safety standards. Leaving everything to national rules creates confusion on the ground, where enforcement officers and commuters alike are left guessing.
More importantly, LGUs must confront the infrastructure gap they have long ignored. In many parts of Iloilo, Capiz, Antique, and Negros Occidental, there are no service roads parallel to national highways. No bike lanes. No clearly designated alternate routes. When e-bikes are banned from highways, riders are often left with nowhere else to go. That is displacement by default.
Local governments have the authority — and responsibility — to plan mobility beyond the highway. This means investing in farm-to-market roads that double as safer commuter routes. It means integrating e-bikes into local traffic plans instead of pretending they do not exist. It means coordinating with barangays to map realistic routes that workers, students, and small traders can actually use.
Road safety also demands political will.
It is easier to wait for national agencies to act than to make hard, sometimes unpopular decisions at the local level. But when accidents happen, it is local hospitals that treat the injured, local families that grieve, and local communities that bear the cost.
Western Visayas does not lack laws. It lacks local action. If LGUs continue to treat road safety as someone else’s problem, bans will be enforced unevenly, commuters will be pushed into riskier behavior, and tragedies will continue to be written off as “accidents.” They are not. They are the result of choices — and inaction.
LTO can regulate, but LGUs must govern. Road safety is shared responsibility, and local governments must finally step into their role — not as bystanders, but as builders of safer roads and safer communities.
