Last week was good for someone like me, who is both an academic and practitioner in the field of governance. It was a week of learning from experiences all over the world in the area of urban development and transportation. This was because of three visitors from the United States of America—Benjamin de la Peña and Amira Ibrahim of Rockefeller Foundation (a US based philanthropic organization that supports work that expands opportunity and strengthens resilience to social, economic, health and environmental challenges) and Susan Zielenski, the Managing Director of SMART (Sustainable Mobility and Accessibility Research and Transformation), a project of the Transportation Research Institute and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning in the University of Michigan. They were here as partners of the Ateneo School of Government which is undertaking a study on transportation and mobility in Metro Manila. Read the rest of this entry »

THE Philippine government is losing $3.6 billion or P153 billion every year because of traffic congestion in Metro Manila, a lawmaker said on Friday.

Citing a report by the San Francisco-based Filipinas Magazine, Rep. Homer Mercado of 1-Utak party-list said that $1 billion is lost to wasted gasoline, electricity, man-hours and hiring of traffic aides, while $2.6 billion is squandered to missed or reduced sales and investment disincentives. Read the rest of this entry »

There are many adjectives used to describe Metro Manila traffic.

Sadly, “fast” and “efficient” are not among them. And in a sentence, words used to illustrate the mess usually comes with the complementary expletive. Read the rest of this entry »

MANILA, Philippines – The country’s balance of payments (BOP) surplus jumped 174 percent in the first quarter of the year due to robust earnings of the central bank from its investments abroad and foreign exchange operations, remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) as well as the higher foreign borrowings obtained by the National Government, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported yesterday. Read the rest of this entry »

Certainly, the MMDA scheme of strictly limiting vehicles plying EDSA on weekdays to only four days, and of introducing those ubiquitous U-turn slots, have had a positive effect on easing the traffic flow on this major transport artery. But these have not been enough. Read the rest of this entry »

MANILA, Philippines – The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) was an agency rocked by leadership changes that was caused by politics and the presidential polls last May. Read the rest of this entry »

We know Christmas is around the corner because there are a lot of things associated with the season that begin to manifest themselves around this time of the year such as those ubiquitous twinkling lights and lanterns. Sadly, no thanks to global warming, we haven’t been waking up to nippy mornings yet despite the fact that we’re almost in the middle of December. Read the rest of this entry »

The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) had conducted a stakeholder dialog with public/private utilities due to the alarming reports of inconvenience to pedestrians and motorists brought by irresponsible road diggings along major thoroughfares in Metro Manila. Read the rest of this entry »

MANILA, Philippines – Sen. Ralph Recto said yesterday any effort to decongest EDSA should be anchored on reducing the number of public utility buses (PUBs) plying the national thoroughfare. Read the rest of this entry »

Some time today, the Metro Manila Mayors league will be meeting to tackle among many things, the proposal of the MMDA to resurrect the full-blown vehicle reduction scheme along EDSA. Read the rest of this entry »