Beating the Traffic: Civil Society Participation in Transport Reforms and Innovations in Metro Manila, Philippines

Abstract

Traffic congestion is synonymous with Metro Manila, the capital of the Philippines. With a population of almost 13 million people, travel usually takes a grueling amount of time as they traverse the gridlocked roads and cram into the very limited supply of public transport modes. Meanwhile, cars reign supreme in occupying much of this metropolis’s hardly expanding road networks. While the government, foreign creditors, and big corporations plan for new and expensive transport infrastructure and public utility vehicle modernization as ways to solve the traffic problem, they tend to focus only on increasing economic gains and prioritizing technocratic expertise in transport planning and decision-making. They tend to marginalize the meaningful participation of civil society in co-creating transport solutions. This is why this research provides examples of good practices of collaborative initiatives to address traffic problems. Through my interviews with government transport agencies, private sector representatives, and civil society, as well as my auto-ethnographic account navigating around Metro Manila’s complicated transport system, I present two examples of civil society-led transport reform initiatives in Pasig City. These examples contribute to reconstituting urban transport as a project of “shared responsibility” among the diverse constituents of the transport system. It builds upon a post-development discourse and the urbanism of Jane Jacobs in understanding modernity and urban development. In this way, the research contributes to how meaningful collaboration in transport reforms and innovations can make possible sustainable and less interventionist solutions to the transport problems of metropolitan cities in the Global South.