Sakay.ph is a public transport commute app that works similarly to Google Maps’ directions feature, but with a key difference: it specializes in public transportation. While Google Maps prioritizes road networks and private-vehicle routing, Sakay.ph focuses on jeeps, buses, UVs, trains, and informal modes that global platforms often overlook. This “blind spot” in public transport data is exactly what Sakay.ph tries to fill.

The project started around 2013, during a Public Transport App Challenge organized by the World Bank together with Philippine government agencies. Sakay.ph didn’t win the grand prize, but it did win the Open Community Award in 2015.

More importantly, the team observed a consistent pattern of real users relying on the tool. That was enough motivation to keep it alive as a side project until today.

TTC sits down with Wilhansen Li, CTO of Sakay.ph, to talk about the app and the issues of data transparency in the urban mobility sphere.

Image renderings care of Wilhansen Li of Sakay.ph

Business Realities and the Cost of Maintaining Transport Data

The team behind the app was initially very confident about pouring their resources into Sakay.ph, expecting to keep the lights on through the usual monetization methods, but they discovered a common problem:

Everyone wants transport data. Almost no one wants to pay for it. – Wilhansen Li

Transport data is expensive to maintain due to the number of servers and staff to pay for, field work to do, quality control to maintain, but government agencies and private organizations rarely have the budget or willingness to fund it.

This is not unique to the Philippines. They’ve spoken with similar companies and competitors abroad like WhereIsMyTransport, based in South Africa, that expanded briefly into the Philippines before closing in 2023. Their goal was to eventually sell to Google.

Such companies survive by writing grants or relying on development funding.

Why Public Transport Data Is So Difficult to Maintain

Philippine agencies want data but often lack the capacity to handle geospatial datasets. For example, LTFRB typically uses Excel or CSV formats that list origins, destinations, and major roads, not detailed geospatial routes. While public transport modernization programs aim to address this issue by establishing offices dedicated to public transport data, implementation remains weak, and maintaining updated route data is challenging.

Even Sakay.ph, which specializes in this, needs about one month to fully process and verify new data. Route changes caused by barangay road closures, construction, or one-way schemes take time to integrate, let alone track in real time. So most time-sensitive updates go on their Facebook Page.

Lack of Public Transport Data: A Lack of Public Support?

Organizations keep asking the team for public transportation data, including datasets, GTFS files, and route information, among others. But because government-hosted data often becomes inaccessible or disappears, Sakay.ph eventually decided to publish the data on GitHub. It wasn’t their original plan, but it became the de facto solution simply because no one else was maintaining it.

This situation reflects a larger issue in the Philippines: The lack of sustained government support for transport data. The responsibility inevitably falls to private groups, even though they lack the funding structure or institutional backing to maintain it indefinitely.

The Sakay.ph team tried monetizing the service for about three years, but it proved difficult. So today, data maintenance is slow. According to Wil, two weeks is the minimum time required to properly interpret and verify data. Anything faster isn’t realistic.

The problem is made worse by how often transport authorities announce route changes only days before implementation, sometimes three days prior. Integrating these changes into routing systems is extremely difficult under those conditions.

It All Goes Back to the Government

Public transport is, by nature, tied to the government. Whether local or national, agencies control the routes, the operators, and the regulations. This is why Sakay.ph slowly shifted toward helping LGUs keep track of their fleets.

One example is their partnership with Quezon City and the QCity Bus system. On paper, it sounds simple: buses have GPS units, the data is forwarded to the city, and Sakay uses that to show which buses are active.

In reality, the data chain is chaotic. GPS providers send raw coordinates attached to a device ID. These IDs have no bus number, no operator name… nothing that links the data to an actual vehicle. Sakay.ph can’t know which bus is which without a proper registration pipeline.

In theory, it’s easy. In practice, QC has to call the bus operator, who calls the GPS provider, who responds a week later with something completely unrelated, like asking if they can change the formatting of the GPS messages.

Meanwhile, a user-generated question pops up on social media: “Is this bus operating?” and remains unanswered.

Cracks Behind the Infra Curtain

Our conversation drifted into the bigger picture of Metro Manila’s mobility problems, especially with the BGC–Ortigas Bridge. It was supposed to improve connectivity between two major CBDs, but instead it created induced demand.

The bridge lands directly into narrow streets with no buffer, funneling cars into a mall and choking the whole area. Walking it is nearly impossible. Biking it is borderline dangerous. The design favored vehicle flow over human movement. As a side effect, the residents of Brgy. Kapitolyo are the victims of this project.

Compare that to the Parklinks Bridge, which has wider sidewalks and much better pedestrian space. It feels like a project made by people who learned from past mistakes. Unfortunately, lessons in this country are often paid for by the frustration of thousands of commuters.

Even BGC, which markets itself as “walkable,” has contradictions. Wide sidewalks and clean streets hide the fact that pedestrians still wait absurdly long at stoplights because the system remains car-centric. And the biggest flaw: Public transport isn’t allowed to enter most of BGC. No direct buses, no jeeps from EDSA into the commercial core. Commuters must transfer at Market! Market! or take a GrabCar, another subtle push toward car dependence that creates the very traffic everyone complains about.

Sakay.ph Claims Its Space Between Intention and Reality

What becomes clear through all of this is that Sakay.ph lives in the gap between good intentions and the hard realities of urban mobility. It’s not trying to be a disruptor. It’s trying to make sense of a complicated system and offer whatever clarity it can. For Wil and the rest of the team, the job is part responsibility, part stubbornness, part love for Metro Manila that doesn’t always make things easy.

In their own words, they keep going because people still use it. Because somewhere out there, someone needs to figure out which jeep to take, and the app can answer that question when no one else will.

But they can’t do this alone. When will the government start funding projects like this and really push for a people-first NCR?