SafeTravelPH City Guide to Human Transit 2026: Rating Cities for People and Places, Not Just Vehicles
- TSE
- 7 hours ago
- 4 min read
Transport planning and development in the Philippines is often discussed through big-ticket projects: new highways, new terminals, new rail lines, or “modernization” that mostly focuses on vehicles. However, commuters, who make up the majority of Filipinos, experience cities in a different way. People feel a transport system through the daily realities of waiting time, walkability, safety, comfort, and whether the city actually makes it possible to live without needing a private car.
To start 2026, SafeTravelPH is launching a new blog series: SafeTravelPH City Guide to Human Transit--inspired by author and transit planner Jarrett Walker’s “Human Transit” book that pictures reliable public transport designed around how people actually move and live, and having developments that are always "on the way" of communities.
In this series, we will rate cities using a simple 1–10 score per criterion, combining what we can measure with what people can immediately recognize on the ground.
This is not meant to “name and shame.” It’s meant to give LGUs, planners, and advocates a practical way to ask: Is this city becoming easier to live in without a car?
The Criteria
1) Accessibility: Density of the Urban Core
Density is not just a statistic. It determines whether public transport can be frequent, financially viable, and convenient. Cities with compact urban cores naturally support shorter trips, higher ridership, and more walkable access to services; true to 15-minute city principles. Low-density cities can still have good transport, but they need stronger planning discipline to avoid expensive, inefficient routes.
2) Accessibility: Transit Lines per Capita
A human transit city offers options. We will look at how many usable public transport lines exist relative to the city’s population and activity centers. This includes not only the number of routes, but whether those routes form a usable network, connecting people to schools, markets, jobs, terminals, and hospitals without excessive transfers or long walks.
(For criteria 1 and 2, we will demonstrate and teach you how to conduct data-driven Accessibility analytics. Based on free ans open tools and data. )
3) Safety: Road Crash Deaths per 10,000 People
Safety is not a side issue. It is a transport outcome. A city cannot claim progress if people are dying or getting injured just trying to cross the road or commute. We will use road crash fatality rates as a core indicator of whether the city is truly managing speeds, road design, enforcement, and protection of vulnerable road users.
Cities without good data for road crashes will also get lower scores for not even trying to count what they want to manage.
4) Governance: Local Policies and Institutional Capacity
Good transport does not happen by accident. Cities need ordinances, enforcement mechanisms, and dedicated staff who understand mobility. We will review whether the LGU has meaningful policies and governance structures related to cycling, tricycles and local paratransit, road safety, and public transport operations, including whether there is a functioning transport office or technical working group that can plan and implement reforms beyond one-time projects.
5) Reliability: Timetables, Stops, Wayfinding, and Passenger Information
Reliability is what makes public transport feel “real.” A city scores higher when public transport has fixed schedules (or at least managed headways or dispatching), designated stops, clear route information, and systems that help passengers predict travel time. We will also look at whether the city has started adopting digital tools like GTFS for route visibility on platforms such as Google Maps, and whether stop infrastructure supports consistent operations.
6) Human Scale: Active Transport and Low-Speed Design
Human transit is not only about riding but also begins with walking, the first mode of transport we acquired as humans. Cities will score higher when they provide safe sidewalks, bike lanes, crossings, traffic calming, and car-free or low-speed zones that make daily life accessible for children, seniors, and persons with disabilities. This criterion captures whether the city is being designed for human movement, not just vehicle throughput.
A stroad--part street, part road--often appears where fast-moving traffic is combined with frequent driveways, loading activity, and dense access points, creating constant conflict between vehicles and people. When that corridor is lined with mixed land uses, low- to medium-intensity commercial fronts beside residential areas, more trips are generated on foot and by short rides, but the environment is still engineered like a high-speed road. The result is predictable: higher exposure to crashes, weaker sidewalk and crossing performance, and a public realm that discourages walking even though the surrounding land use demands it.
Bonus Criterion (So we'll have “6…7!”)
7) Bonus: Ride-Hailing Presence as a Symptom
We’ll treat this as a bonus--not automatically “bad,” but revealing. A strong presence of ride-hailing apps like Grab or Angkas or Joyride and similar services can mean convenience and economic opportunity. But it can also signal that public transport is failing: people shift to ride-hailing when routes are unreliable, transfers are painful, and waiting times are too long. In many cities, ride-hailing becomes the “escape hatch” for those who can afford it.
What's Next
In the next entries of this series, we will apply this framework to Naga City, Iloilo City, and Puerto Princesa City--three cities where SafeTravelPH has worked closely with local partners through research, data collection, and planning support.
Our goal is simple: to help build a shared language and data for improving transport systems: one that prioritizes access, safety, governance, reliability, and human-scale streets.
In the end, the best transport system is not the one with the biggest projects.
It’s the one that makes everyday life easier.