Philippines: Transportation

            By: Joseph Seabra
            One technological development within transportation that could greatly benefit the Philippines is the implementation of autonomous vehicles as taxi services within it highly developed cities. The Philippines is a country that relies heavily on tourism to spur its economic and infrastructural growth. If autonomous taxied vehicles were implemented in the country’s major tourist cities such as Manila or Quezon City, then this would allow for the countries technological development be comparable to its infrastructural growth.

            Autonomous vehicles as described by Forbes are “Machines performing intelligent actions without human supervision” (Walch, 2019). This means that the Philippines could have taxi services that could take tourist to destinations within its major cites without the need for human interference. The Philippines is known to have a government that is controlling of its business and is quite hesitant in introducing foreign companies into the country. Due to this hesitance towards foreign companies it would be interesting to see if the Philippines would allow for autonomous vehicle companies to establish themselves. As stated by Suzanne Murtha the senior program manager for intelligent transportation initiatives at Atkins Global “it’s a matter of governments capturing and sharing data about real-time, on-the-street traffic conditions so drivers can make better choices.” (King, 2014).

Although the Philippines is a highly divided country in a geographical sense, its tourism industry within its major cities is one of the countries leading sources of income. Just in 2018 the country had approximately 7.1 million tourists enter the country, with most of the tourist flying into the country’s largest city of Manila (2019). This means that if a company that creates or manages automated vehicles was to institute itself within the Philippines. It could provide its service to the country within the cities of Manila and Quezon City allowing both infrastructural, and financial growth. There are many technologies that could benefit the growth of the Philippines but seeing as the country has invested millions into its infrastructural growth, it is now more than ever that it needs to merge technology and transportation.



References

King, J. (2014). How Transportation Technologies Will Change Everything. In govtech.com. Retrieved September 20, 2019, from https://www.govtech.com/transportation/How-Transportation-Technologies-Will-Change-Everything-.html

Walch, K. (2019). The Future With Level 5 Autonomous Cars. In Forbes.com. Retrieved September 19, 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/06/20/the-future-with-level-5-autonomous-cars/#18844f0e4382

(2019). Philippines records 'all-time high' 7.1M tourist arrivals in 2018. In ABD-CBN News. Retrieved September 19, 2019, from https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/01/24/19/philippines-records-all-time-high-71m-tourist-arrivals-in-2018


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