MMDA announces rebranding of Metro Manila commute as contemplative wellness experience, issues certificates of participation to stranded motorists

Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat

MANDALUYONG CITY, PHILIPPINES — The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority announced Wednesday a comprehensive rebranding of Metro Manila’s traffic crisis as a curated urban wellness experience, releasing materials describing the average two-to-four-hour daily commute as “an opportunity for stillness in motion,” distributing laminated certificates of participation to motorists trapped on EDSA for more than ninety consecutive minutes, and publishing a forty-page wellness guide titled “Still Moving: Finding Calm in Manila’s Living Arteries.”

The Rebranding Initiative

MMDA Chairman Bernard Alcantara-Navarro said the initiative, developed in consultation with a wellness consultancy firm that billed the agency P4.2 million for “experiential urban transformation services,” represented a fundamental shift in how Metro Manila understood its relationship with traffic congestion.

“We have been approaching traffic as a problem to be solved,” Chairman Alcantara-Navarro said at a press conference held in an air-conditioned room five kilometers from EDSA. “What if traffic is not a problem? What if traffic is an invitation? An invitation to breathe, to reflect, to exist in the present moment alongside eleven million of your fellow citizens who are also, technically, going nowhere?”

The “Still Moving” wellness guide, printed on glossy paper and distributed at major chokepoints via MMDA enforcers on motorcycles, includes breathing exercises specifically designed for use in stationary vehicles, guided meditation scripts for right-of-way disputes, and what page seventeen describes as “gratitude journaling prompts for the extended queuing experience,” including suggestions such as “What am I grateful for that I might not have noticed if I had arrived on time?” and “How is being one hour late to a meeting teaching me something important about myself?”

Data Context the Rebranding Does Not Address

The Philippine Statistics Authority estimates that Metro Manila commuters lose an average of P108 billion in productive time annually to traffic congestion, a figure the MMDA has declined to incorporate into its wellness materials on the grounds that “framing stillness as economic loss is counterproductive to the meditative framework.”

The Japan International Cooperation Agency, which has spent significant resources studying Metro Manila’s transportation challenges and producing detailed infrastructure recommendations over multiple decades, noted in a statement that it remained available to discuss its findings whenever the MMDA was ready to move beyond the wellness phase of traffic management.

JICA’s most recent report, published in 2022, recommended a combination of bus rapid transit expansion, road space rationalization, and number coding reform. The report is 847 pages long. The “Still Moving” guide is 40 pages long and includes an illustration of a lotus flower in traffic. The MMDA has distributed sixteen thousand copies of the guide. It has not yet responded to the JICA report.

The Philippine Star spoke with commuters along EDSA who received the wellness certificates. Reactions varied from amusement to several descriptions of the initiative that cannot be reproduced in a family publication.

Transport Groups Respond

The Transport Workers Solidarity Commission, representing jeepney and bus drivers who spend eight to twelve hours per day in the gridlock they now understand to be a wellness experience, issued a statement saying the rebranding was “an insult delivered on glossy paper” and that their members did not require guidance on finding meaning in traffic because they had been involuntarily doing so for their entire careers without certificate.

“I have been driving this route for nineteen years,” said driver Eduardo Santos-Villanueva, speaking from the cab of his UV Express unit where he had been stationary on Commonwealth Avenue for forty-seven minutes. “I do not need a breathing exercise. I need the government to build the subway it has been promising since 2019. I need the bus lanes to be enforced. I need the number coding to make sense. I do not need a laminated certificate that says I participated in an urban wellness experience. I did not choose to participate. I am trapped here.”

Santos-Villanueva did, however, keep the certificate. “My kids think it is funny,” he said.

Phase Two Plans

Chairman Alcantara-Navarro said the MMDA was developing Phase Two of the initiative, which will introduce “mindful honking guidelines” discouraging the use of vehicle horns during peak gridlock hours on the grounds that “horn noise disrupts the contemplative atmosphere of the shared stillness experience.” Phase Two will also pilot a “commuter gratitude wall” at the Magallanes interchange where motorists can post notes expressing appreciation for things they noticed while stationary.

Phase Two does not include any road construction, public transit expansion, traffic signal optimization, or enforcement of existing traffic regulations, elements the MMDA said were “outside the scope of the current wellness initiative” and would be addressed in a separate infrastructure program currently in pre-implementation conceptual development in coordination with the DPWH.

The average EDSA commute time last week was three hours and fourteen minutes. This is an improvement of six minutes over the previous month, which the MMDA described in a press release as “evidence that the wellness framework is already producing measurable results.” The methodology used to establish this causal relationship was not provided. It was, the MMDA said, a matter for contemplation.

The MMDA’s internal research division, asked to evaluate the wellness rebranding on effectiveness metrics, submitted a report that was marked “For Internal Use Only” and not included in the press release. This publication obtained a copy through a source who described the report as “not something they were planning to put in the brochure.” The report found that 94 percent of surveyed commuters said the wellness framing did not reduce their stress levels, 87 percent said receiving a laminated certificate in traffic made them “more frustrated, not less,” and 3 percent said they found the certificate “genuinely amusing,” which the report authors noted was the highest-performing outcome in the survey and which they recommended be considered the program’s primary success metric going forward. The MMDA said it was reviewing the findings with an open mind and a commitment to iterative improvement of the wellness experience.

Sitting with Manila’s traffic at The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine.

Also going nowhere at The Onion | NewsThump | The Shovel

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/mmda-rebrands-manila-traffic-gridlock-urban-wellness-experience/