96228 Connections Transport & ICT Mapping Manila Transit A New Approach to Solving Old Challenges Holly Krambeck Whether they attempt to build jeepney stops, expand transit access, or improve bus routes, transit projects across much of the developing world are often hampered by (1) the lack of accurate transit maps and data and (2) the weak capacity of transit 92% of the 25 largest low and agencies to acquire and use such data. To address low-middle income cities the twin aspects of this long-standing challenge, the in the world do not have World Bank, in collaboration with the Philippines complete maps of their and Australian Aid, developed both a methodology transit systems. and a suite of open-source software applications based on free, internationally supported open data standards. The solutions have allowed the quick, low-cost production of transit maps; and they have empowered the agencies—and potentially businesses and the rest of government—for the first time to make ambitious planning and investment decisions based on accurate, comprehensive transit data. The global applicability of this approach has been demonstrated by its adoption in six other developing countries to date. No Data, No Maps, Less Progress Metro Manila) are via public transit. Yet until 2012, Manila had no map of its transit system—hence, “Detailed and accurate maps are so fundamental no efficient way for passengers to locate routes or to sound urban planning, so essential to making transfers or for transport planners to know whether smart decisions about where to build the next transit services were reaching target populations. library, clinic or bus station, that it’s hard to believe how often they don’t exist,” says Joana Mikulsi of In 2012, the World Bank and the Philippines De- the nonprofit Next City. The high cost and techni- partment of Transportation and Communications cal complexity of conventional data collection and (DOTC) began an experiment—to develop Manila’s mapping have been a perennial barrier to improv- first multimodal transit map by way of a simple, in- ing transit services in developing countries. expensive, and replicable methodology for collect- ing and maintaining transit service data.1 The Manila Challenge Transit databases are not new. But acquiring, using, and maintaining them in conventional fashion is Nearly 70 percent of all trips made by the 12 mil- impractical for transit systems with limited budgets lion residents of metropolitan Manila (officially, and technical capacity. The World Bank team need- 1 The Manila program was developed with the support of Australian Aid and Korea’s ICT4D Trust Fund. JANUARY 2015 NOTE 02 ed to devise a way for Manila to map its system and port planners where the true demand for service was. maintain the database at low cost, with minimal And for the first time, planners could begin to untangle technical demands and with seamless cross-agency the decades-old spider web of route redundancies— collaboration. the data revealed that the ratio of route length to service area for buses and jeepneys was as much as 16 times greater than in cities with comparable popula- The Manila Solution tions, such as Beijing, New York, and Singapore. In support of its institutional capacity building, the World Bank team devised a technical solution rely- Bringing It to the Passengers ing on three “open transport” principles: Through a national competition organized by the • Open data standards—the team adopted an World Bank and DOTC, more than 480 local develop- open international standard for transit service ers competed to create web and mobile trip planning data, the General Transit Feed Specification applications for consumers that rely on the GTFS (GTFS), a well-documented, clearly defined database. Since its release in July 2013, the database standard that benefits from a global commu- has been downloaded more than 14,000 times from nity of practitioners who voluntarily contribute the DOTC website for use in such applications. Wide improvements and innovative solutions. use of such apps makes government agencies more • Open-source software—the team supported accountable for the accuracy of the data. development of an open-source mobile phone application, TransitWand, with which transit The Local and Global Impact agency staff members could generate route data in the GTFS format at substantially lower With its newfound ability to document and visual- cost than with conventional methods. ize Metro Manila’s network, the government re- • Open data—after a media-intensive launch, the cently developed a two-year plan to greatly reduce DOTC made its GTFS data publicly available the excess jeepney and bus routes. And plans for a on its website, supporting the growth in local World Bank–financed rapid transit corridor in Ma- third-party applications to help passengers nila are using the open-source database to develop more easily and effectively navigate the sys- the corridor’s feeder network. More generally, the tem. Opening the data creates accountability DOTC is now beginning to require vendors to use for data maintenance. open-data standards and open-source licenses. By minimizing the time and expertise required to In a significant extension of the Manila initiative, the build and maintain a database from scratch, these firm that won the national consumer-app com- technical solutions enormously reduced the tradition- petition has been hired by the DOTC to create a al barriers to sustained mapping initiatives in Manila. real-time bus tracking system using GTFS data. The contract represents a substantial leap in capacity The project also included substantial institutional and initiative and shows how open standards can assistance to overcome the financial, coordination, generate high-quality domestic job opportunities. and sustainability hurdles associated with the pur- suit of such an initiative in a developing country. Beyond the Philippines, transport agencies and NGOs in Brazil, China, Egypt, Mexico, Mongolia, and Vietnam are using open standards so they can apply the Manila What the Map Showed project tools to their own needs. The project is thus demonstrating that one city’s investment based on The resulting transit map for Metro Manila showed that open-transport principles can be applied globally—in the number of transit routes—nearly 1,000—was almost international development, a very powerful concept. double the existing official estimates. The discrepancy between official and actual routes revealed to trans- For more information on this topic: http://bit.ly/OpenTransport_Draft Connections is a series of concise knowledge notes from the World Bank Group’s Transport and, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Global Practice. The series is available on the internal and external online platform of the World Bank Group. Connections discusses projects, experiences, and front-line developments in Transport and ICT. The series is produced by Nancy Vandycke, Shokraneh Minovi, Adam Diehl, peer-reviewed by experts of the Practice on a bi-weekly basis, and edited by Gregg Forte. For more information on Connections, and to read other notes in the series, please visit: http://www.worldbank.org/transport/connections JANUARY 2015 NOTE 02