Last week I began a new series of columns on the transportation challenges of Metro Manila, proposing a change of paradigm from understanding our current problem to be one from traffic to a transportation, or better still a mobility, perspective. When I sent that first column to Fr. Jett Villarin SJ, president of the Ateneo de Manila, he reminded me to also propose solutions to the problems I exposed. That is exactly what I do in today’s column, written again with the research collaboration of Christian Laluna and the Innovations for the Base of the Pyramid team of the Ateneo School of Government which is implementing with the Metro Manila Development Authority a Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored project on Manila’s transportation challenges. In this column, I propose an overall vision for solving our transportation challenges, a vision defined by a concept I introduced last week, that of “new mobility.”
