Another look at Iloilo’s main bikeway
Much has been written and said about Iloilo’s bikeways and particularly about the grander one built along the main highway that is Ninoy Aquino Avenue. This bikeway is already usable but is being extended along with the road widening works for the national road that connects major towns in central Iloilo province including Sta. Barbara and Cabatuan, which host the international airport. Here are some photos and commentaries on the bikeway.
Iloilo City’s wide bikeway along Ninoy Aquino Ave (formerly the Iloilo Diversion Road) – the building on the left is SM City’s recently opened expansion. The photos were taken from the pedestrian overpass across the diversion road.
A closer look of the traffic conflicts at the intersection with Jalandoni Street – the 3-leg intersection is not as simple as it initially looks because of traffic coming from/going to the service road on the right. It is quite obvious in the photo that the alignment of the service road changes abruptly, affecting the trajectory of flow along the road.
The photos were taken around 9:30 AM and there was practically no bicycle traffic to be seen. To be fair, perhaps there is significant bicycle traffic, particularly the commuting kind, earlier in the morning and later in the afternoon. Bicycle volumes need to be measured and monitored to determine if the bikeways indeed have encouraged more people to take up cycling as a mode for their regular commutes. That’s the Plazuela in the background on the right.
Another look at the bikeway shows it emanating from Iloilo City proper where it ultimately connects to the bikeways at the Promenade along Iloilo River. There are no bikeways within Iloilo’s CBD itself.
The photo above shows the bikeway and beyond (towards Jaro and Pavia) with the new SM annex at left and the Injap Tower Hotel on the right.
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Tricycle fares in Antipolo City
Tricycles in Antipolo City practically have no defined or restricted areas of operations. Unlike other cities, say Quezon City or Manila, tricycle operations in Antipolo is practically free ranging. You can get a tricycle in Mambugan and ride it directly to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage (Simbahan ng Antipolo); a distance of 8 to 10 kilometers depending on the route taken. As such, there has been a tendency for tricycle drivers to overcharge passengers even though fares were subject to negotiations and there have bee established average or usual fares for certain trips. Nevertheless, there have been and are still lots of complaints about tricycle fares in the city. This is evidenced from the queries posted on the city’s social media accounts.
This situation begs an important question on whether Antipolo City has official tricycle fare rates. The answer is yes, it does have official rates and this is stated under City Ordinance No. 2009-316. I assume that ‘2009’ here refers to the year the ordinance was signed into law by the City Council. Here’s a graphic from Antipolo City’s Facebook page showing official tariffs and warnings against negotiating fares as well as the maximum number of passengers a tricycle can carry.
Tricycle fares based on official tariffs under City Ordinance No. 2009-316
Those two other ordinances seem to be among the most abused by tricycle drivers and likely very difficult to enforce considering the ranges of tricycles. According to netizens, many tricycle drivers still tend to negotiate fares for long trips and tricycles carrying more than 4 passengers is a common sight in the city especially tricycles that are used as school service vehicles. I tend to wince myself whenever I see a tricycle overloaded with school children negotiating Ortigas Ave Extension or Sumulong Highway. These are unsafe and put a lot of young lives at risk.
Below is an example fare matrix for tricycles posted at the New Public Market along Sumulong Highway and across from the new Robinsons mall in the same area:
Illustrative fares to/from the New Antipolo Public Market
I think there should be similar information posted in other areas around Antipolo City. This is so that people will not be confused about the tricycle fares and so as to minimize the instances when tricycle drivers take advantage of passengers not familiar with trip distances and the fare rates.
The Antipolo City Government is working towards improving transport and traffic in this highly urbanized city. I think this should include regulating tricycle services so that the city could reduce their numbers along national roads like Marcos Highway, Sumulong Highway and Ortigas Ave. Extension. Tricycles have become a nuisance in traffic and not just for motorists but for cyclists and pedestrians as well. They shouldn’t be traveling long distances and along rolling and mountainous terrains. They tend to be noisy and, perhaps most problematic, are smoke belchers. Hopefully, this can be addressed in the next years as the city continuous to grow and become more progressive. This only means that the city should strive towards a modern, efficient and people & environment-friendly transport system.
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Undergraduate research topics on transportation for Academic Year 2015-2016
Our students at the University of the Philippines Diliman are currently making their final presentations for the research topic proposals to be implemented in the next second semester (January to May 2016). The first semester (August to December 2015) focused on research topic formulation including problem identification and formulation, review of related literature, and development of methodologies for data collection and analysis. Here are the topics of our students in transportation engineering and planning (not in any order):
- Economic Feasibility of Electric Tricycles as Shuttle-Type Transport Service in Medium Density Residential Areas with Linear-Type Local Road
- A Study on Road Public Transport Policies and Planning in Metropolitan Manila: 1970s to the Present
- Comparative Study of GrabTaxi and Regular Taxi within Metro Manila
- Comparative Study of Uber and Regular Taxi
- An Analysis of Road User Behavior Influence on Unsignalized Intersection Performance
- An Assessment of Cycling and Bicycle Lanes along Marcos Highway
- Energy Efficiency of Electric Jeepneys
- Application of Discrete Choice Modeling in UP Diliman
- Development of Vissim Traffic Simulation Model of UP Diliman (Focus on Vehicle Characteristics)
- Evaluation of Runway Design and Capacity of Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)
- Determination of Satellite Parking Locations and Capacities in the University of the Philippines Diliman Campus
- Critical Review of Practices Abroad Towards Identifying Pavement Performance Indicators in the Philippines
- A Study on the Suitability of Tricycles as an Urban Transport Mode in the Philippines
- Benefit Monitoring and Evaluation of the South Metro Manila Skyway Project (Stages 1 and 2)
- Predicting Student Trip Patterns Using Enrolment Data within UP Diliman
- Video Image Processing for Parking Management
- Analysis of Occupancy and Dwell Time of Buses in EDSA
- Development of Public Transport Information System in UP-Diliman
- Philippine Air Transport Safety: Analysis of Incidents over the Last Two Decades
- Evaluation of Transfer Facilities for Public Transportation in Metro Manila
- Survey of Maintenance Practices for Concrete Structures in Transportation Facilities
- Road Safety Audit Evaluation of Expressways
- Calibrating MOBIL Lane Changing Model for Local Traffic Micro- Simulators
- Development of VISSIM Traffic Simulation Model of UP Diliman
Again, note that there are many topics here that have as a study area the UP Diliman campus. These are part of the studies the Institute of Civil Engineering and the National Center for Transportation Studies are conducting to address transportation issues in the campus, which is an open campus with public roads.
Differences: pro-walking vs. anti-car
I came across this article posted at the Planetizen site entitled Pro-Walking, or Anti-Car. It is a good article that heads-on addresses the the differences of being pro-walking to that of being anti-car in terms of transport policies in cities. I think these concepts including the “nuts to crack” list provided by the author is relevant not only to cities that want to promote walking and cycling over car use, but to individuals and groups as well who seem to be following a hard line when in comes to their advocacy to recover road space in favor of pedestrians and cyclists.
Encouraging and providing incentives for walking
A friend based in Singapore posted a photo showing a poster promoting a ‘National Steps Challenge’. The objective apparently and obviously is for Singaporeans and foreign nationals living there to get into walking. The target, according to the poster, is 10,000 steps per day. There are even illustrations in the poster showing estimates of how many steps you can do at the home, the office or during your regular commute.
[Photo courtesy of Engr. Joy Garcia]
Such programs are exemplary and are aimed at boosting citizen’s health and welfare. Of course, Singapore can do this and many will respond even without rewards because Singapore has excellent transport infrastructure including an extensive public transport system and suitably designed pedestrian facilities.
Can cities in the Philippines come up with a similar challenge? Are there cities with good enough pedestrian facilities that can lead the way and become good practice examples in promoting walking; not just for the reason of commuting but also as a means to achieve better health among its citizens? Authorities can even include infographics on promotions showing the number of calories you can burn for typical walking trips as well as the health benefits one can derive from walking regularly. I think there are many cities that have decent infrastructure and attractive routes to promote walking. Among them are Vigan City, Marikina City, Legazpi City, Iloilo City and Davao City. Hopefully, these cities can take the cue from Singapore in promoting walking and perhaps, too, a national agency like the Department of Health can pitch in to promote this worthwhile cause for healthier lifestyles.
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Unprepared and incomplete – realizations from the APEC transport experience
Before I forget about what transpired during the holding of APEC in Manila a week ago, here’s a couple of photos I found over the internet and shared via social media.
Commuters along Roxas Boulevard walk past a column of the unfinished NAIA Expressway, one of the transport infrastructure projects that has not been finished. [Photo from The Manila Bulletin]
APEC lanes and severe traffic congestion along EDSA – there’s an opportunity here for a prrof of concept test for BRT. [Photo from Facebook]
I saw many memes and read some articles mentioning BRT specifically as one solution to Metro Manila’s transport problems. The second photo above was modified to replace the car travelling along the APEC lanes with a bus.
It is easy to imagine what could have been if the government decided to use the event and the lanes they allocated for APEC vehicles to do a ‘proof of concept’ run of BRT services or at least express bus services (what some DOTC people call high quality bus services). Perhaps what could have been done for part of the 10 billion PHP expended for APEC was to buy a fleet of brand new buses and provided these for free public transport for people who would need to commute during APEC. Services along two corridors would have sufficed – these two would have been EDSA and Roxas Boulevard. [The other option would have been to talk to bus operators and cooperate with them to organize express bus services along EDSA and Roxas Blvd.] Aggressively promoting these free services ahead of APEC would also have meant commuters, including those who usually used their own vehicles, could have opted for these transport services and not affected by the ‘carmageddon’ that ensued over that period. There should have been services to the airport terminals, too, but I will write about this in another article.
The dry run could have yielded essential data for assessing the feasibility of such bus services as an alternate to rail systems that would take much time to build. Incidentally, if the LRT Line 1 Extension to Cavite was built right after the current administration took over, that line could have already served tens of thousands of passengers from the south who regularly commuted to Metro Manila for work and school. The first photo above does not lie about just how many people could have benefited from that rail project. Meanwhile, MRT Line 3 remains dysfunctional and with its reduced capacity could not handle the demand for transport that it should have been able to carry if services had not deteriorated over the years.
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Improvements to alternative route between Rizal and Makati
I finally got another look at the conditions along the alternate road to Highway 2000 and C-6 Extension a couple of weeks ago while en route to Bonifacio Global City. Traffic along Ortigas Ave. is usually terrible these days even during the weekends due to the road and drainage works between Cainta Junction and Brookside. I am glad to say that there have been significant improvements to the section of Don Hilario Cruz Ave nearest to the Manggahan Floodway and beside the Megawide plant. There have been significant developments, too, along C-6 Extension in the Lupang Arenda area of Taytay, Rizal. Here are some photos of the area.
Don Hilario Cruz Ave., the road beside the Megawide plant and parallel to Highway 2000, is being improved with half the carriageway already prepared for paving. The other half appears to be graded is being used by vehicles.
A roller runs along the base layer of the road that’s being paved. These sections were usually muddy and full of craters during the wet season and very dusty and still full of potholes during the dry season.
Sections of C-6 Extension at the Lupang Arenda area have been widened and the expropriated lands are now being transformed into paved roads. The original sections have been overlayed with asphalt to improve their ride-ability.
Another section in Lupang Arenda shows finished PCCP for the eastbound side of C-6.
Another photo of C-6 extension. Once the finished lanes are usable, authorities will probably divert traffic there so they could also pave the rest of the road.
Travelers between Rizal and Makati/Taguig will benefit the most from the improvements along these roads. These will increase road capacity as well as travel speeds along this route. Now, if only authorities can also improve C-6 itself in Taguig…
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Working with big data on transportation
There have been a few initiatives working on big data from government agencies whose responsibilities are primarily on transportation. Among them are past projects implemented by the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD) and current projects being implemented by UPD, Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) and De La Salle University (DLSU) with support from the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). While these projects are more oriented towards some specific objectives often linked to research & development (mandates of DOST and these academic institutions), there are still a lot of data out there that needs to be digitized, processed and analyzed. UPD has done this to some extent through its National Center for Transportation Studies (NCTS), which had been a repository for data and reports from DOTC and DPWH. However, the center does not have a funded program to undertake that repository or archival function it is expected to do. Despite much lip service from DOTC, DPWH and NEDA, no support has been extend by these agencies in the past many years.
I recently came upon this excellent work from a private firm specializing in data science. Here’s a link to one of their recent ‘stories’ showing us relevant statistics on road safety in Metro Manila:
http://stories.thinkingmachin.es/road-danger-pedestrians/
Their website says the data set the stats and graphs are based from are from the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), which maintains the Metro Manila Accident Reporting and Analysis System (MMARAS). This is good work and something road safety experts can use to be able to come up with programs and projects to improve safety in Metro Manila. I hope they could also get a hand of the DPWH’s Traffic Accident Reporting and Analysis System (TARAS) data that covers national roads. Unfortunately, the DPWH has stopped encoding TARAS data recently (the PNP still collects data though) so I am not sure how recent their data set is.
We need more of such work on a lot of data our agencies are producing including data from the Land Transportation Office (LTO) and the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB). Such information could be used to understand our transport systems including determining how to optimise supply and demand when combined with other data sets such as geographical information systems (GIS) and socio-economic data from the census.
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Caught up in trAPEC
It’s a corny title to this post and perhaps is practically what people would call ‘click bait’. But then it is a very appropriate one considering it describes what happened last Monday and is still happening today and for the rest of the week affected by the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum hosted by the Philippines and held in Metro Manila. Yes, Metro Manila. And many people have been asking loudly or in their mind why the capital city when the government was supposed to be promoting and bragging about growth in other cities (inclusive growth anyone?). I would have thought and preferred to have APEC in either Subic or Clark, which have been touted as rapidly growing areas and as international gateways. In fact, Clark is being pitched as the location of a potential new city in the Clark Green City project as well as the aerotropolis currently being developed (slowly) near the airport and the SCTEX Clark South interchange.
Instead, we have the APEC forum and all its attendant activities in Metro Manila. And it seems that the forum has maximized its detrimental impacts on the economy as it practically shut (some people even say shat) down the capital because of severe traffic congestion and a lack of public transport infrastructure and services to carry commuters safely and efficiently between their homes and work places. The Manila Bulletin posted the following photo last Monday:
Commuters were forced to walk along Roxas Boulevard just to get to work.
Here are a few more photos courtesy of an old friend from high school:
A lone cyclist pedaling along a practically empty section of EDSA (photo credit: Bong Isaac)
Walkers? – commuters took to walking along EDSA, one of the country’s busiest and most congested thoroughfares. I was amused of the memes about the ‘Walking Deadsa’ referring to people seemingly walking like zombies after a hard day’s work just to get home. (photo credit: Bong Isaac)
Commuters walking along a vehicle-less EDSA. The MRT 3 line at the left in the photo also seems to be ‘lifeless’ at the time (evening I was told) the photo was taken. (photo credit: Bong Isaac)
People walking along the service road along the SLEX – most affected of the road closures were people from the southern parts of Metro Manila including those from Laguna and Cavite. (photo credit: Bong Isaac)
I remember being asked once during an interview if it was possible to determine the cost of congestion due to a single event such as a road crash or perhaps a rally. I replied that it is possible given the available tools and expertise in making such assessments. What could be the cost of such a week-long event? Would the holidays for Metro Manila have lessened the economic impacts on traffic of the APEC? Or was it assumed that agreements and the media mileage we got from APEC more than enough to cover economic losses?
Could this disastrous traffic mess have been averted or at least mitigated despite APEC in Manila? Yes, perhaps, if the transport infrastructure particularly the LRT Line 1 Extension to Cavite, the upgrading of the MRT Line 3 and an airport access transit system were completed prior to APEC. These along with other major projects for Metro Manila were promised years ago and yet have not been realized. Add to this the apparent lack of contingencies (BRT-like express buses? bicycles?) that could have eased the pain of hundreds of thousands of commuters affected by APEC traffic schemes. Government has no right to tell people “I told you so” when government efforts for the benefit of its own commuting citizens have been deficient these past years.
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Looking back at EST social marketing
With all that are happening today that are related to sustainable transport, I tend to pause and look back with a smile on how it was more many years ago when we were struggling to promote environmentally sustainable transport (EST). At that time, most local government units were not yet into sustainable transport and were unaware of the principles. There were a few who already had a project or program in place but didn’t know that these were classified as EST.
CAPACITY-BUILDING AND SOCIAL MARKETING FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT
Under the project, we identified several local good practice examples for EST and invited representatives of those LGUs to spread the word to other LGUs. Those who regularly went with us to promote EST were representatives of the Marikina City Bikeways Office, and San Fernando, La Union’s City Planning Office who shared their experiences in phasing out 2-stroke motorcycle-run tricycles.
I recall that one major Visayan city wasn’t so receptive at the time as the City Planning Coordinator seemed more interested in international trainings and foreign assisted projects than the city actually developing sustainable programs and projects on its own. The irony now is that despite his being not so excited about sustainable transport that city now has good examples for EST including a bicycle corridor and pedestrian and bike-friendly riverside developments.
But there was the case of the very receptive and progressive City Planning Coordinator of another major Visayan city who helped us immensely in promoting EST. His eagerness, particularly for public transport options, paved the way for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) to gain a foothold in the discussions paving the way for more efficient transit systems to be considered (and now planned and designed) for his city. That interest led to his city getting the attention of an international agency that brought in then former mayor and now the recently re-elected Mayor of Bogota, Colombia, Enrique Penalosa, to do talks about his city’s Trans Milenio BRT system. I remember a couple of visits of Mr. Penalosa including a series of dinner meetings sponsored by the private sector in Makati City who were interested in the Bogota’s transport success story.
We always wondered who, when and how EST would be advocated by others and particularly by a younger generation who would turn out to be more outspoken and aggressive in promoting EST. These include those calling for better public transport systems, those advocating for pedestrian and bicycle facilities, those pushing for safer roads, and those lobbying for clean air. With all that we are seeing now around us (Congratulations Firefly Brigade for a very successful Tour of the Fireflies last Sunday!) and on various media platforms, I strongly believe that we are on the right path towards achieving better quality, sustainable and equitable transport for everyone.
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Caught (up) in traffic 