Agency Calls It A Breakthrough In Awareness-Based Enforcement, Chairman Says Citations Would Be Culturally Inappropriate

Filed for Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat, whose Manila bureau operates from a table at a Shakey’s in Quezon City.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority on Monday unveiled TRAFIC-VISION, a 340-camera AI platform that will automatically identify, photograph, and log illegally parked vehicles in real time and then, per the agency’s own fact sheet, “flag them for advisory notation within the internal monitoring dashboard”. No citations will be issued, no fines will be levied, and no vehicles will be towed.

The Agency Defends The Approach

MMDA chairman Romualdo Clemente-Aguilar described the initiative as “a breakthrough in awareness-based enforcement”, and explained that active citation would be “culturally inappropriate at this stage of the system’s maturity”. The Makati pilot correctly identified 118,000 violations and issued citations on zero.

Asked what the purpose of the system was if no citations would be issued, the chairman paused seven seconds and said: “The purpose is the data. The data is the purpose.”

Fake Expert, Real Mechanism

Dr. Josefina Balagtas-Reyes, a senior fellow at the Institute for Public Administration Studies, called it “observational governance”: “We measure the parking. We measure the traffic. We measure the flooding. We then measure how we feel about the measurement. We never actually address the parking, the traffic, or the flooding.”

A Parallel Noted In London

The pattern is consistent with The London Prat’s reporting on Meta’s innovation metrics. The Philippine Star noted in February that Metro Manila’s enforcement agencies have been in a measurement phase since 2017.

A Driver Weighs In

At an intersection in Cubao where the reporter observed a red Fortuner parked illegally for 47 consecutive minutes, Mrs. Flordeliza Magsaysay, 58, said she had watched that specific vehicle park in that spot “every Tuesday and Thursday since 2022”. The TRAFIC-VISION dashboard had correctly logged it as the ninety-third advisory notation on the same plate. No citation.

The Budget

TRAFIC-VISION cost 1.4 billion pesos to deploy; maintenance runs 260 million pesos per year. The chairman said the investment represented “exceptional value for the data generated”.

More: NewsThump. SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/