Move As One Coalition

“Metro Manila traffic is impossible to solve.” 

But we are solving the crisis. And in just a year.

Move As One is the biggest mobility reform movement in Philippine history. 

In a year, we have convened 140 organizations and 77,000 individuals across various sectors - women, persons with disabilities, transport workers, laborers, youth, climate justice advocates, commuters, among many - to solve the crisis.

In a year, we have influenced decision makers to move people, not cars. We have won P11 billion for people-mobility, a huge feat from the Philippines' near-zero budget for years. 

In a year, we have built a network of transport advocates nationwide, starting movements in their own localities. 

And with the funding, the network, and platform from Elevate, we can do more. 

Funding. Our sectors are the center, the voice, and the heart of this movement. The funding will support our local and sectoral organizers nationwide. 

Network. We want to work with movement leaders worldwide who have sustained reforms for generations. 

Platform. Beyond funding and network, I want the world to know that our masses solved what was impossible. And with that, inspire more grassroots movements worldwide to solve their country’s impossible crisis too.

Nanay Loida is a senior citizen whose husband pushes her 6 km thrice weekly to access her dialysis center. Philippines asks her to “climb the overpasses” or to “try the car-clogged sidewalks.” She can do neither so she’s on our highways, praying that huge trucks and speeding vehicles don’t kill her. I want a world that is inclusive of Nanay Loida. 

Renz was a nurse who was killed while biking home after saving lives. It’s been a year, but his father still visits his grave everyday. I want a world where Tito still has Renz because there are protected bike lanes and our streets are safe. 

My father is a jeepney driver, a transport worker who works 21 hours every day - from 4 am to 12 midnight - just to earn $16. This is undignified labor. I hate seeing him exhausted all the time, but what I hate more is hearing him apologize for not being enough of a father to provide our needs. I want a world where transport workers like my father are not robbed of their dignity.

I am from the masses. I am a child of the streets. And I am reclaiming our space back.

In 2019, TomTom ranked Manila’s congestion as the 2nd worst in the world at 53%, only 1% short of the first spot at 54%. It’s a close call. In fact, Waze ranked us as the world’s worst. The fact remains: the Filipinos are suffering needlessly in this mobility crisis. 

Daily wage workers who cannot afford unemployment are fired for not reporting on-site on time. Patients are declared “dead on arrival” as ambulances fail to weave through the congestion. Commuters are forced to walk home until 1 am because of transport shortage, only to be up 3 hours later to reach their workplaces at 8 am. 

We lose P3.5 billion daily because of this mobility crisis, funding that could have been allocated to more housing, better public health, and other social services for 100 million Filipinos, most of whom are poor. 

Move As One’s revolutionary solution to this crisis is simple: move people, not cars. 

In just 1 year, we created a movement of 140 sectoral organizations and 77,000 individuals writing policies, creating budget proposals, engaging public processes both locally and nationally. We are a movement of ordinary people claiming our space back in the streets and in governance.

The Philippines' mobility crisis has been going on for so long. And for years, our response had been to build overpasses, to widen roads, to encourage ride-sharing services. We thought we were solving the problem. 

For the longest time, we were blaming public transportation for clogging our roads. But the public transportation ban during the pandemic did not eradicate traffic. 

The pandemic worsened our mobility crisis, but it also showed us a way out. The solution is clear and loud: To solve this mobility crisis, we must flip the coin and undo generations of car-centric policies. 

Overpasses, road widening, and ride-sharing services all have one thing in common: they prioritize cars over pedestrians and commuters. Move As One showed the country that it’s been doing things wrong. 

Instead of overpasses, we lobby at-grade pedestrian lanes and wider walkways. 

Instead of wider roads, we lobby car lanes and parking to be converted to bike lanes and parking.

Instead of expensive Grab and Uber, we lobby for better quality public transportation that the masses can afford. 

Space is finite. We cannot build roads forever, but we can make existing roads more efficient by moving people instead of cars.

Only 12% of Filipinos can afford cars, yet they occupy 70% of the road space and use 99% of our country’s transport budget. 

This is the great inequality of our roads. 

Therefore to decongest our roads, we must ensure that the majority of our population access the majority of our road space. 

The coalition has six reform areas discussed in detail here, but what we do can be summarized into three: 

1. Paradigm Shift. Filipinos venerate cars as a symbol of success. We race to claim ownership of one. Technical approach cannot solve our crisis so we engage the public to dream better: “An ideal country is not where the poor own cars, but where the rich walk, bike, or ride public transportation”  

2. Re-claim spaces in governance. Our sectors participate in legislative hearings. We send letters and recommend policies to our government officials. We write budget proposals and show the Philippine government the sectors’ funding priorities in transport. 

3. Collective Impact. We build spaces of trust, support our government champions, and ensure that all stories are heard and amplified. No one has monopoly in solving the crisis. For the first time in Philippine transport history, all actors are  working together.