One law applies

There’s the law and then there’s Metro Manila traffic — a bedlam, wherein rules are interpreted with all the discipline of free verse. Fistfights, shootouts, road rage: it’s not Mad Max, it’s our morning and early evening drive or commute. The former exists in principle; the latter, in chaos.

Every motorist knows the discordant choreography: red lights ignored, unbroken lanes crossed like they’re mere suggestions, and rules twisted like a jazz riff. In the bewildering middle of it all, the enforcers — uniformed men with the moral clarity of a coin toss, wielding ordinance violation receipts for local government units with the casual menace of a stick-up note.

Enter sanity. In GR 170656, promulgated in March 2024, the Supreme Court declared — finally, forcefully — that only the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority has the legal mandate to enforce traffic laws in Metro Manila. LGU enforcers, the Court emphasized, can only issue a traffic violation ticket if deputized by, you guessed it, the MMDA.

Penned by Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa, the decision reads like a long-overdue exorcism. It overturns a Court of Appeals ruling that had let the fiefdoms flourish, and makes one simple, subversive point: there are no 16 warring city-states and town, but one metropolis that should not be broken in traffic regulation sense by LGU boundaries.

For far too long, Metro Manila’s cities — and that lone municipality — have run their own traffic regimes: each barangay a petty kingdom, and each enforcer a self-styled dictator. You don’t just need a driver’s license, you need a passport to cross the Pasig. Of course, we are exaggerating to mirror public consternation.

But this isn’t merely a nuisance; it’s legalized chaos, the daily farce of wondering what traffic rule applies where, the creeping lawlessness dressed up as governance, the quiet racket of turning public safety into a toll booth.

We know them — the clusters of enforcers who do not direct traffic but loiter like wolves in high-visibility vests. You’ll find them lurking near the World Trade Center in Pasay, on Buendia and Roxas Boulevard, watching, waiting — not for violators, but for victims.

Picture a hapless motorist from the provinces, bewildered by a city’s mystical take on yellow boxes. Stopped. Fined. Threatened. The handwriting on the ticket is illegible; the logic behind the charge, nonexistent. Pay up or surrender your license — it’s bureaucratic highway robbery.

This is why the ruling matters. It doesn’t just restore MMDA’s authority; it reasserts the idea that laws are meant to be consistent and that motorists should not face five interpretations of the same infraction depending on the accident of which city they’re in.

The MMDA Law — Republic Act 7924 — was written for precisely this purpose: to treat Metro Manila as a unified whole. The Local Government Code gives cities power, yes — but not the power to sow confusion or extract revenue from traffic violators like a warlord exacting tribute. Local governments may manage their own roads, designate one-ways, and clear sidewalks, but they are not sovereign states — not yet, anyway.

This ruling is a win not for the MMDA, but for the people — those who traverse this congested urban jungle daily, the delivery riders skating along EDSA’s shoulders, the mothers driving kids across city lines, and the public utility vehicle operators who took the fight all the way to the SC.

But a line drawn must be held. The MMDA must prove it deserves this exclusive mandate. It must deliver fairness, not just fines; logic, not just law. And that may be the bigger challenge. After all, the MMDA takes orders from the Metropolitan Manila Council — composed, yes, of the very same mayors whose fiefdoms just got clipped.

Still, this is a start. A clearing of the smog. A rare moment when law and logic ride in the same lane. And in Metro Manila, that alone is beautiful music.