MMDA On-the-Go

When Bayani Fernando stepped down as MMDA Chairman earlier this year so he could get on the VP campaign wagon trail, I was honestly relieved.  Unless you're from Marikina, don't pretend you weren't either ;-)  Sure, you gotta give the man some respect but, come on, what's up with the pink and sky blue color combo on...on...on everything? :-S   "Fugly" had never before described anything so perfectly.

But enough about "BF", because when new MMDA Chairman Francis Tolentino took over,
roadside infra in the metro began to look normal.  Green on the structures and yellow on road signs, and such, just as they should be.  I'm still seeing pink and blue, like the MMDA HQ in Guadalupe.  Hope that gets corrected ASAP.

Besides normalizing roadside infra, the MMDA bravely took on a significant image makeover by getting into the social interwebs.  When did that happen, I wonder?  But as of this writing, the MMDA has over 21,000 followers on Twitter and over 1,000 fans on Facebook (I still maintain that "fan" is 100x better than "like"), which only goes to show how many people have found MMDA's on-the-go service enormously helpful.

Note: it's interesting how the Facebook fan count is way less than the Twitter follower count, but we'll talk about that another day maybe.

I myself have benefited from mobile MMDA's responsiveness several times.  Keeping my Twitter feed on has helped me avoid traffic jams and make better decisions about my commuting routes.  Sorry to say that this has rendered other traffic monitoring services like Trapik.com obsolete, as I'm sure they get their info from MMDA anyway.

And I think it would be an absolute injustice to not complement the professionalism and wholesome sense of humor of whoever's handling the social media over at MMDA HQ *clap clap clap*  Y'know, before I started following MMDA, I knew they had a website, but I didn't know it was so useful and informative.

MMDA's friendly online presence is so surprising, especially when you consider the bad rep their officers have gotten on the road ("Aaahh...good morning, sir!").  Speaking of which, I am also feeling encouraged that most of them are shaping up and showing some DIGNITY. 

A few months ago, while on our way home, we had just turned into C5 from Ortigas Ave. when the car suddenly sputtered, choked, then came to an awkward stop short of the first Tiendesitas gate.  On this part of C5 was the other end of the Libis flyover, under which was -- you guessed it -- an MMDA outpost (watch post?).  If this scene happened a year ago, no doubt those MMDA guys would have given us a hard time about the whole thing before lending a hand.  I could be wrong, but the general prevailing perception then makes me believe I'm not.  

So anyway, a couple of MMDA guys did come over and nicely asked what had happened, while another guy directed traffic away from us.  After a quick back-and-forth, one of them got his radio out then a minute or so later, they had pulled up their truck right in front of us.  They worked out some way to tow our car with a heavy-duty rope all the way to the nearest gas station.

The experience was nothing short of amazing.  Those guys did it for free and with a smile.  It makes you wish all traffic cops were like this.  Too much to hope for?  I don't think so.  I'm sure these MMDA employees (online and on the road) aren't getting paid much, but they're doing their job with the right attitude.