DOTC launches traffic app challenge

MANILA, Philippines - A competition is being pushed for the development of applications to allow motorists and commuters to plan their trips efficiently and conveniently.

In a statement, Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) spokesman Michael Arthur Sagcal said the three-month competition called Philippine Transit App Challenge will target individuals and groups mainly from the information technology (IT) industry to develop applications using the database of the Philippine Transit Information Service (PTIS).

The competition is being conducted with the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and the Cebu City government.

Started in 2011, PTIS is an exhaustive, two-year effort to gather and organize previously unavailable data on buses, jeepneys, and trains in Metro Manila.

Sagcal said the initiative of building the PTIS at a time when the DOTC could not immediately provide certain essential information to commuters like the best route to take at a particular time.

“The need to gather reliable data at that time in order to deliver convenient and efficient services to the public was immediately recognized and pursued,” he said.

Using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, the DOTC had gathered data on more than 900 bus, train, and jeepney routes. 

It had also collected useful information like the fares and amounts of time required to take these various modes of transportation.

The DOTC analyzed and organized the data, along with other concerned offices like the MMDA, the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB), the Light Rail Transit Authority (LRTA), and the Metro Rail Transit Corp. (MRTC).

It will now be possible to find out what a commuter’s options are to get from one point to another in Metro Manila, what types of transportation and how many transfers will be involved, and how much money and time each option will require.

The two-year data gathering and analysis effort was made possible through a grant from the World Bank, which also funded a similar project of the Cebu City government to make traffic management efforts more advanced.

A paper by Dr. Jose Regin Regidor of the National Center for Transportation Studies (NCTS) at the University of the Philippines showed that motorists and workers lost close to P1.513 trillion over the   years due to traffic jams in Metro Manila.

Regidor’s paper factored-in fuel costs and potential man-hours lost while being stuck in traffic, especially during the rainy season.

The paper, based on a 2000 NCTS study on traffic congestion, said fuel costs while being stuck in traffic add up to P4.212 billion a year, while time wasted in road jams was computed at P137.519 billion.

The paper was presented during the UP College of Engineering Professorial Chair Colloquium last year.

The paper proposed that the government invest more on mass transportation through  private-public partnerships to minimize the negative cost of traffic congestion.