THE ANTONINUS JOURNAL

Abstract

Over the last few decades, cars have been widely adopted in today’s modern cities, contributing to numerous related problems and difficulties, particularly traffic congestion. Metro Manila, a highly urbanized automobile-centric city, is experiencing challenges closely linked to automobility. Previous initiatives in addressing traffic congestion often had limited success. This can be partly attributed to the incomplete understanding of the complexities of the transport system. This study reviews various theories and models used in transport research. It assesses their effectiveness in addressing transportation challenges, focusing on traffic congestion in a highly urbanized context like Metro Manila. The multi-level perspective (MLP) is seen as a helpful framework for understanding the relationships and interactions between and within the different levels of a socio-technical system. It is argued that improving the understanding of all dimensions within the system can help transportation professionals and government agencies formulate and implement more effective policies and programs.