Grab partners with govt, WB to ease city gridlock

The notorious vehicle traffic congestion in two of the Philippines’s largest cities is the target of a tie-up between app-based transport service Grab, government agencies and the World Bank (WB).

The partnership, called the OpenTraffic Initiative, seeks to manage travel speeds and journey times in Manila and Cebu City, where vehicular traffic jams have reached crisis proportions.Under the program, the government will be provided with free global-positioning system (GPS) data to address traffic congestion and road-safety challenges.

The Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) and its concerned agencies will spearhead the program.

Aside from OpenTraffic, another initiative, dubbed Driver, will identify road-incident blackspots and improve emergency response.

To date, 200 staff from the DOTC, the Philippine National Police (PNP), the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), and the Cebu City Transportation Office (CCTO) have been trained to use the OpenTraffic platform.

Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio A. Abaya said in a statement that he welcomes the initiative, noting that using big data is one of the “potential solutions” to the challenges faced by the country’s transport systems.

“Through this, we can provide accurate, real-time information that can help alleviate traffic congestion and improve road safety,” he said.

Grab Philippines head Poch Ceballos expressed pride in collaborating with the DOTC and WB on the OpenTraffic initiative. “We share a common objective of using big data to make critical decisions about traffic and infrastructure management,” Ceballos said.

“With Grab’s network of drivers traveling across Philippine cities every day, there is a rich real-time GPS dataset now readily available to DOTC as our public service,” he added.

During a recent press conference, Grab shared facts from the OpenTraffic initiative, which enumerated several vital transport points to consider.

According to the 2015 testing of the OpenTraffic platform in the country, the best time to travel in Metro Manila is at 4 a.m. on Monday. Passengers are, meanwhile, advised to avoid streets at 7 p.m. on Wednesdays. The platform also noted that the maximum weekday travel speeds is 36 kilometers per hour in Cebu City, 31 kph in Davao City, and 38 kph in Manila.

The percentage difference between maximum travel speeds (when residents are sleeping) and minimum speeds (during the worst weekday congestion) is 80 percent in Cebu City, 90 percent in Manila, and 63 percent in Davao City.

It noted that traveling home on Epifanio de los Santos Ave. (Edsa) on a rainy month could go as fast as 3 km/hour, but traveling southbound would be 32 km/hour.

The day of the week with Manila’s fewest road incidents is Sunday.

In 2015 the CCTO reported at least one traffic accident every three days at the Fuente Osmena Circle roundabout.

At Edsa, Ortigas, in Manila, the PNP reported nearly one accident ar day in 2015. The day of the week with the highest number of reported Manila traffic injuries and fatalities is Friday. PNA