IT SEEMS that the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) has tried all the ideas that they could come up with to solve the traffic problem in the metropolis, but the flow of traffic is still slow most of the time, or at least during the peak hours.
I am ready to say that so far, all the solutions that were tried by the MMDA are all visually obvious, but let me hold off on that, because before that, we should begin by knowing what the problem really is.
Not that I would want to sound philosophical, but allow me to say that the problem in Metro Manila is the slow flow of traffic, and not the occurrence of traffic itself. Technically, there is already traffic if there is at least one vehicle on the road. There is traffic yes, but the flow is not slow because there is only one vehicle.
And now, allow me to go back to my earlier proposition that since all the supposed solutions of MMDA are visually obvious, they should now try other solutions that are not visually obvious. Before you will start to wonder what it is that I am talking about, let me go straight to my point that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) holds the key to the problem of traffic congestion, even if everything that ICT has to offer is not visually obvious.
Not that I have too much of a suspicious mind, but I do suspect that the preference for visually obvious solutions is politically driven, and its real purpose is to gain political mileage, and not so much on solving the problem itself.
Pardon my incurable bias, but I really believe that there is a technological problem for every national problem. I also have another bias the idea that every solution to each problem would require the collection of data so that these could be processed into information that could be used to guide decision making.
Data is data and it has been around even before computers came along, but now data has evolved into Big Data. That could possibly mean many things but whatever that means, Big Data is now bigger than it was, and it could now solve bigger problems than it used to, even if the problem is as big as solving the slow flow of traffic in a big metropolis like Metro Manila.
In a manner of speaking, it could be said that the Internet of Things (IOT) is the practical companion of Big Data, because in effect IOT could be the collector of data sets that eventually becomes part of Big Data.
As of now, the best known IOT devices are the over a hundred million mobile phones that are now being used. Sooner or later however, there will be more IOT devices that will be out there, perhaps in the trillions, all collecting data and all able to take instructions from remote servers. Even now, we could already say that IOT devices could be programmed and instructed to collect data that will enable our traffic managers to understand how the traffic flows all the time in all places.
As it is supposed to be, all towns and cities in Metro Manila are supposed to have their own Geographic Information Systems (GIS) that are actually digital maps that would show their roads and highways. (To be continued/PN)
