Urban Life: 6 Latest Ways to Survive Traffic Jam in Metro Manila
Living in Metro Manila is fun but minus the traffic. (Image: Government) This horrific traffic situation in the country’s capital city has been affecting not only our job performance but also our personal lives, taking away hours we could have spent instead with our families and loved ones. However, we are all aware that solving the traffic problems is no easy feat. And it seems that for the meantime, all we can do is adjust and come up with a game plan on how to deal with the unbearable traffic. ShoppersGuide cares, that’s why we created a list of commuting hacks to help you reach your destinations hasslefree. If you master these tricks, you will surely find traversing Metro Manila roads more tolerable and even enjoyable either for work or for leisure.
1. Ride a bicycle to work
Let’s start with the basic. Riding a bicycle can help reduce air pollution compared to driving a car. While some commuters are looking forward to own a motorbike to skip the endless heavy traffic on the road, a bicycle might be a safer and healthier option.
Imagine a bikecentric country with people owning more bicycles than cars, the Carmageddon we experienced in 2015 would have never happened.
2. Check social media updates before leaving home
Social media plays a major role in our daily lives. Use it for checking advisories especially on the daily train operations and live traffic updates from the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA). Twitter is also your best friend when it comes to realtime traffic news and updates, not to mention that the MMDA is active in attending to commuters’ roadrelated tweets and queries.
3. Use traffic navigation apps
Not only does a traffic navigation app give directions to drivers, it also suggests alternative routes that are not too congested, making driving in the city hasslefree. There’s the MMDA Traffic App which gives an overview of the traffic situations in major Metro Manila roads. Another popular one is Waze, a social traffic app acquired by Google and one of the most used navigation app today. Through crowdsourcing, it collates information from users and updates and ping other drivers about accidents and other road conditions of a certain place. Both apps are free on IOS and Android mobiles.
4. Share a ride
We all want to travel in comfort. But that seems impossible if you are going to traverse Metro Manila roads during rush hour. That’s where the idea of ridesharing comes to existence. There are ridesharing apps letting you skip the fully loaded bus, jeep, or trains and lessen the hassles in your daily commute. There’s UberPOOL and GrabShare that match passengers with other riders located in the same area who are going to a common destination. These also help you save almost 30% less of the original rate when you book an UBerX and GrabCar.
Another ridesharing app is Wunder, a Germanybased company that lets car owners fill their empty seats with passengers going to and from the same destinations. Unlike Uber and Grab, Wunder is not created to generate income. Passengers are charged a desirable amount in exchange of a comfortable ride.
5. Keep your Beep Card loaded
Just when we thought that our train systems can save us from the horror of heavy traffic, there come the long queues. Many irk at the thought of endless lines at MRT and LRT stations during busy hours. Do not forget that you have to buy a train ticket first before following the queue of people who already have a card. Owning a Beep Card, a reloadable smart value card used to settle payments including LRT and MRT tickets, comes handy. It would be wise to load your card the total amount of your 1week train allowance so you can skip the ticket booth. There are also Ticket Vending Machines on all LRT and MRT stations that let you read the current balance of your card and reload on your own. In case your train encounters a technical glitch, you can also use your beep cards in several bus lines including BGC bus, Citylink, HM, and Froehlich Tours Buses.
6. Stay Entertained
Listen to music, read a book, watch your favorite Koreanovela, browse the internet through your mobile phone or daydream—whatever keeps you entertained, do it. While we can’t do anything quick to make these traffic problems disappear, distracting ourselves can help us battle the stress inflicted by traffic woes and noise pollution. Meanwhile, an article from Reader’s Digest suggests that successful people use their time to plan out the whole day as well as creating a plan B in case inevitable delays happen [1] during their commute. Perhaps that’s a better way to spend the extra time we have on our way to our destinations.
While the government is still in the process of developing better ways to improve our transport system and there are things that are not in our control, we can contribute to the improvements by being responsible commuters and motorists. Sometimes, breaking a basic traffic rule can worsen the traffic situation. Remember to gather up more patience when hitting the road, offer help when necessary, and smile to fellow riders and commuters because it’s true that happiness is contagious and a smile can brighten anyone’s day. Care to share your own beatingthetraffic hacks with us? Drop a comment below!