No Friendship Stickers to be released this year?

According to a Facebook friend, a source from inside Las Pinas City Hall told him that they would not be releasing a new batch of Friendship Route stickers this year.

This means that the 2007 batch of stickers will still be honored by participating villages. This also means that new cars bought after the last issuance of the Friendship Route stickers last 2007 will still not be able to have them on their cars.

For villagers whose houses are directly being affected by vehicles passing the shortcut (longcut?), this may be good news since the number of cars passing by their roads will not increase.

For LP residents who have new cars, this means they have to traverse the perpetual traffic along Alabang-Zapote Road.

And we know how fun it is to pass by Las Pinas’ main thoroughfare especially now with all the Maynilad diggings and the ever-present obedient jeepney and bus drivers there. Yes, we’re being sarcastic.

Many individuals had also resorted to replicating the Friendship Route stickers and selling them for P300 to even P1,000.

The Las Pinas City Council however is bent on stopping this illegal practice by strictly implementing an ordinance apprehending or penalizing vehicles bearing these fake stickers and also those that are laminated.

What we’ve observed is that these new vehicles just pay the “entrance fee” just so they could avoid the traffic in Alabang-Zapote Road and go home to their loved ones.

Just for discussions sake, if City Hall does release Friendship Route stickers this year, will traffic along Alabang-Zapote Road (connecting Las Pinas to Paranaque, Cavite and Muntinlupa) really be eliminated or lessened?

I guess we’ll never find out this year if rumors are true.