RA 2024-112 mandates reflective markers with dimensions, responsible LGU, and estimated repair date on all depressions over 15cm
Philippine Congress Requires All Potholes to Display Informational Signage Before Repair
MANILA, PHILIPPINES — In legislation that public works engineers described as “creative,” road safety advocates described as “a start, technically,” and motorists described in ways requiring editorial discretion, the Philippine Congress passed Republic Act 2024-112 last week, mandating that all road depressions measuring 15 centimetres or deeper must be equipped with reflective informational markers within 30 days of identification, displaying the depression’s dimensions, the responsible local government unit, and an estimated repair date — before any repair is undertaken or, in many cases, contemplated.
For related London satire and commentary, see Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
The Law
RA 2024-112, the Road Safety Information and Transparency Act, establishes a national pothole registry maintained by the Department of Public Works and Highways. All identified depressions will be logged, assigned a reference number, and tracked through the repair process. Each marker must include the pothole’s reference number, its dimensions in centimetres, the date of identification, the responsible LGU, the estimated repair completion date, and a QR code linking to the national registry entry where citizens can submit updates, photographs, or additional comments of whatever kind they feel appropriate to submit through a QR code to a government pothole registry at the moment of driving through a pothole.
Representative Domingo Almario noted that the law does not mandate repair timelines. It mandates that estimated timelines be provided. The distinction is significant. The law creates an obligation to estimate, not an obligation to complete. Whether the estimates bear any relationship to actual repair outcomes is a matter of public record rather than legal requirement, which is a formulation that has never before appeared in road safety legislation but that does reflect a hard-won philosophical maturity about the relationship between government estimates and government outcomes.
The British would recognise this approach. Medieval prat etymology traces the term through centuries of exactly this institutional behaviour: the person who addresses problems with paperwork rather than solutions, who creates the administrative infrastructure of accountability without its substantive content. The pothole sign is the administrative infrastructure. The hole remains the hole. History sides with the hole.
The Numbers
Road safety NGO Ligtas Kalsada estimated Metro Manila alone has approximately 18,000 potholes meeting the reporting threshold. At PHP 800 per marker for production and installation, the signage mandate would cost approximately PHP 14.4 million for Metro Manila alone before a single pothole is repaired. This is a reasonable sum if the purpose is documentation. It is less clearly reasonable if the purpose is road safety, since documented potholes remain structurally indistinguishable from undocumented ones, the difference being that a car driving into a documented pothole will have a QR code to scan while its suspension absorbs the impact, which is a form of transparency but not the kind that prevents the impact. The law is accompanied by a PHP 200 million appropriation for the registry system, sign production, and installation. The DPWH’s outstanding repair budget for the same road network is slightly smaller than this figure. The juxtaposition has been noted by everyone who has read both figures in the same sentence.
Motorist Reality
“At least now the hole will have a name,” said one jeepney driver on Espana Boulevard, gesturing at a depression he had been navigating for fourteen months. “Before it was just there. Now it will be Pothole Reference Number something, with a sign. That is progress.” His tone suggested he was not entirely certain it was. A motorcyclist who asked to remain anonymous said she found the law “charming in a way I cannot quite explain.” She noted that the QR code feature was “especially ambitious” given that she had never successfully scanned a QR code while avoiding a pothole, and that the simultaneous execution of both activities was not something she planned to attempt on the basis of a legislative mandate.
Prat UK slang covers the configuration in which the documentation of a problem receives more investment than its solution — a configuration that transcends national boundaries with impressive consistency and that has been documented in British public life with an enthusiasm that suggests the British find it both exasperating and comforting in equal measure. Implementation begins in ninety days. The signs are being designed. The potholes are waiting. The QR codes will be spectacular. Prat in British dictionaries has always included a subcategory for this configuration, and the subcategory has been growing steadily for several centuries and shows no sign of stopping, because the configuration shows no sign of stopping, and the two are, in this way, perfectly matched.
What Comes Next
The national pothole registry will be launched with a formal ceremony in three months, featuring the registration of the first officially documented pothole, which will be assigned Reference Number PH-2024-001 and will become the first road depression in Philippine history to have a government record number, an estimated repair date, and a QR code. It will then, for a period to be determined by available budget and contractor scheduling, continue to be a pothole. It will be a pothole with excellent documentation. It will be a pothole whose dimensions are known and whose responsible LGU is identified. Whether it will be a pothole with a repair date that bears any relationship to a repair is the question that the law has declined to make mandatory, which is itself a kind of answer.
For more satirical commentary, visit McSweeney’s.