MMDA Report Identifies 47 Solutions, Implements Zero
Manila Traffic Authority Unveils “Theoretical Decongestion Plan”; Commuters Remain Stuck in Same Traffic
Read more satire at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
MANILA — The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority held a lavishly catered press conference Thursday to unveil its 2025 Integrated Traffic Decongestion Framework, a 211-page document identifying forty-seven solutions to Metro Manila’s traffic crisis, none of which have been implemented, three of which were previously announced in 2019, and one of which is simply the word “synchronisation” written in a larger font than the surrounding text.
MMDA Chairman Romulo Dela Cruz called it “a landmark document in the history of urban mobility planning,” delivered from a podium in Mandaluyong while, outside, EDSA stood completely still for the fourteenth consecutive hour.
The Forty-Seven Solutions
The framework identifies solutions ranging from the genuinely plausible — expanded bus rapid transit, coordinated signal timing — to the aspirational (a proposed “vehicle volume reduction incentive programme” that will pay Manilenos not to own cars, budget unspecified) to the quietly alarming (Solution 31: “encourage telecommuting,” which the document notes is “subject to employer cooperation and internet availability”).
Solution 14, described as “harmonised intersection management,” was presented with a diagram. The diagram showed intersections working correctly, which several transportation engineers noted was not a solution but a description of what intersections are supposed to do.
Public Reaction
The public reaction was swift and conducted primarily from the interiors of stationary vehicles. A Grab driver named Noel, reached by phone while sitting on C5 for the second hour, said he had “heard about this plan” and had “some thoughts” that he described as “not printable.” A commuter named Maribel, standing on an MRT platform, said she had been standing on the same platform since 2022 and was “open to anything.”
The MMDA website published the full 211-page document at 3:00 p.m. The server crashed at 3:04 p.m. It was back up by 6:00 p.m., by which time most commuters had given up trying to read it and were simply trying to get home.
Historical Context
Manila has been identified as one of the most congested cities in the world by the TomTom Traffic Index for six consecutive years. In that same period, the MMDA has released four separate decongestion frameworks, announced three new bus route expansions, and installed one new footbridge that was completed eight months late and opens onto a section of pavement that does not exist.
Dela Cruz acknowledged that “implementation timelines remain aspirational” but said the framework represented “the most comprehensive thinking yet applied to this problem,” which several observers noted was a low bar given the previous frameworks.
What Happens Next
The framework will be reviewed by an inter-agency task force, which will submit recommendations to a technical working group, which will present findings to the committee, which will refer the matter back to the MMDA. The timeline for this process is described in the document as “phased,” with Phase One expected to conclude “upon resource availability.”
EDSA, reached for comment, said nothing. It was a road. It was also, as of press time, completely stationary from Balintawak to Magallanes.
More landmark documents in the history of solving nothing: The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. Full MMDA filing archived satirically at https://prat.uk/.
The Consultant Economy
Manila’s traffic problem has spawned a parallel economy of consultants, researchers, planners, and framework authors who are paid to study the problem and produce documents about it. The city has commissioned at least eleven major traffic studies since 1995. Each study identifies the same core issues: inadequate mass transit, poor signal synchronisation, too many vehicles, insufficient road capacity, and an enforcement culture that prioritises paperwork over outcomes. Each study recommends the same broad interventions. Each framework that follows cites the previous framework as a foundation. The traffic on EDSA remains.
A senior planner at the Urban Land Institute, speaking on background, described this cycle as “the infrastructure of inaction” — a process that produces enough activity to satisfy accountability requirements without producing the kind of sustained, funded, politically uncomfortable change that would actually address the problem. Manila is not alone in this. Most large cities in developing Asia face similar dynamics. Manila is, however, among the most documented, which means there is more material to cite in the next framework.
What Riders Actually Do
While frameworks are produced and press conferences held, Manila commuters have developed their own parallel infrastructure of adaptation. Informal transport networks — tricycles, UV Express vans, motorcycle taxis operating through Angkas and JoyRide — fill gaps that formal transit does not cover. Carpooling arrangements are informal but widespread. Many office workers have shifted their hours, arriving at 7:00 a.m. and leaving at 8:00 p.m. to avoid the worst of EDSA’s peak. Others simply work from home on days when the forecast suggests particularly severe congestion, using traffic apps not to navigate but to decide whether to leave the house at all. This adaptation is impressive and entirely unaccounted for in any of the forty-seven solutions. The MMDA’s framework, asked about informal transit integration, refers the reader to a working group. The working group does not have a chair.
Further Observations
It is worth pausing to consider what this situation reveals about the broader landscape of public life in this part of the world. The gap between announcement and action, between framework and outcome, between what officials say at press conferences and what happens in the streets, is not a gap that emerges from malice or incompetence alone — though both play a role — but from a structural mismatch between the speed at which problems develop, the speed at which political credit is sought, and the speed at which institutional solutions can be implemented. Announcements are fast. Press conferences are fast. Reforms are slow, unglamorous, and require sustained attention across electoral cycles, which is precisely the kind of attention that political incentives do not reliably produce. The result is a particular kind of civic theatre in which the performance of action substitutes for action often enough that the distinction becomes blurred, and in which citizens develop a sophisticated dual consciousness: they know what is happening, they say what is appropriate to say, and they adapt their actual lives to the reality rather than the announcement. This is not cynicism. It is a form of intelligence developed under conditions where the alternative — taking every press conference at face value — would be functionally disabling.
What changes this, when it changes, is rarely the quality of the plan. It is the quality of the follow-through, which depends on political will, institutional capacity, funding continuity, and the kind of incremental, unsexy progress that does not generate press conferences but does, eventually, generate outcomes. The countries and cities that have transformed themselves — that have moved from announced frameworks to actual functioning systems — have done so through this mechanism: not better plans, but better execution of ordinary plans over long enough timelines that the compounding effect of sustained effort becomes visible. The framework is not the problem. What you do with it the morning after the press conference is the problem. Manila, like many cities, is still working this out.
SOURCE: Santa Claus