(Words by Denice De Guzman; Illustration by Denice Salvacion)
Living in urban Manila often means having to put up with inconveniences you seldom realize are inconveniences. For one, anybody who has had to navigate a different city—say, Hong Kong, Bangkok or San Francisco—will notice huge differences in commuting. But aside from the marked differences in infrastructure, there are nuances in Metro Manila mass transit that do not translate as easily.
“The Philippines has a very informal transportation network,” says Philip Cheang, co-founder of commuting app Sakay.ph. “For example, jeepneys. They don’t have a timetable […] You don’t have information about when they would be available.” These things give longtime residents a sense of familiarity, but could be hell for newcomers from the provinces, and or course, tourists.
Problem-solving, Pinoy-style
If anything, Philip Cheang, Kenneth Yu, Thomas Dy and the rest of By Implication are problem-solvers.
“When you think about commuting in the Philippines, it’s pretty hectic. There are many problems associated [with it] and you can very broadly split that up into several problems: infrastructure problems, maybe a population problem or a density problem, and an informational problem,” says Philip.
In 2014, Philip and Thomas joined the Philippine Transit App Challenge hosted by the Department of Transportation and Communications, Metro Manila Development Authority and the Cebu City government. They entered their app, Sakay.ph, which serves as “Waze for commuters”. While it failed to win the top prize, Sakay.ph garnered the Open Community Award, which lauded its crowdsourced information on commuting routes in the metro.
“We really can’t do much with the infrastructure or the population, but information is something that we can tackle. It’s something that we’re good at.” That is no overstatement. In 2010, By Implication entered the game Wildfire to Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, where it went on to win first prize in the Game Design category. For Sakay.ph though, the challenges were different. First is that our transport system is something that doesn’t have standardized information that is readily available.
“That makes it difficult to build a system that actually accommodates for all of that,” says Philip. Sakay.ph solves this by factoring in the unique Filipino commute versus the data provided by the DOTC and MMDA. Philip recounts testing the app through Katipunan. The dataset gave a roundabout way to get to Ateneo from Katipunan because the assumption was Katipunan Ave. is a highway, which in other countries, you’re not allowed to walk along.
“We had to do a lot of massaging in the data and into the code. […] we had to modify it a lot to make sure that it fit within the context of the Philippines because we didn’t want to give incorrect decisions.”
The base app was set on figuring out when and where to access different modes of transportation in the metro, but updates are also now providing help to commuting newbies—what a jeepney is, how to pay—trivial things for those familiar with the system but are actual mind bogglers for those unfamiliar with local customs. That’s what innovation is anyway—finding the kinks in the familiar and solving the problem to satisfy a need.
