Vek Ridon, a Doctor in Information Technology, developer, trainer, and former faculty member, and her husband Rey, a former government employee with a background in IT, built SakayTayo Baguio-Benguet in a single night. The trigger was a call from the La Trinidad and Benguet provincial governments for carpooling solutions as fuel prices and the daily struggle of commuters reached a breaking point.

"As researchers, we just wanted to ease some pain of the community, yun lang po. Parang, it was one night after we read it, we built it," Vek said. The only delay before launch was registration: they had to secure the SakayTayo name to send OTPs. The app went live during the Lenten break on April 1, 2026.

It is free. There are no fares, no app fees, and no middleman. Just neighbors helping neighbors move.

What SakayTayo Actually Does

The app covers Baguio City and all 13 municipalities of Benguet, with barangays in Baguio and La Trinidad pre-loaded for local rides. Intercity routes including Baguio to Manila, Baguio to La Union, and Baguio to Abatan are also available.

SakayTayo offers four ways to share a ride. Carpool connects drivers who have empty seats with riders who are going the same direction — gas costs can be shared or the ride can be offered for free. Taxi Pool matches people heading the same way and splits the fare equally at a single meeting point. Intercity connects riders going to Manila, La Union, or Abatan with drivers or other passengers heading the same way. Hatid-Gulay is the feature that makes SakayTayo distinctly Benguet — it is designed specifically for farmers bringing vegetables to the Trading Post, allowing them to share truck space booked by sacks, bags, kilos, or crates.

That last feature is the one that separates SakayTayo from a generic carpooling app. A platform built for the Cordillera that includes a dedicated logistics function for vegetable farmers is a platform that actually understands its community.

The Problem It Is Responding To

Diesel prices in the Cordillera are projected to reach ₱125 to ₱133 per liter. Solo taxi rides in Baguio now regularly cost ₱100 to ₱150 or more. Public utility vehicles are failing to meet demand, with queues of stranded commuters stretching until 10:30 PM. The Baguio transport crisis is not a future risk. It is the daily reality for students, workers, and farmers who depend on shared transport to move through the city and the province.

SakayTayo is a direct community response to that reality. "We believe the community itself is the solution," Vek said.

The app was built through the couple's company, iLearn Webtech — not a startup with investor funding or a government mandate, but a two-person research operation that decided the fastest path to helping was to build the tool themselves and give it away for free.

Safety by Design

The app includes several safety features embedded into its core design. Every user is verified by a Philippine mobile number. Profiles display school, barangay, and ride history. Carpool rides require a minimum of two passengers — no one rides alone with a driver. Users can report any ride or user that feels unsafe. The app advises users to always meet at public, well-known landmarks such as Burnham Park, Session Road, SM City, or school gates, and to never share an exact home address with someone they have just matched with until they have ridden together multiple times and feel comfortable.

Those guidelines reflect thoughtful design for a community app in a city where many users are students — the most vulnerable demographic in any ride-sharing platform.

What This Means for Northern Luzon

The transport crisis in Baguio is not unique to Baguio. Across Northern Luzon, rising fuel costs, inadequate public transport, and the daily friction of moving between home, work, school, and market are shared problems that no government program has fully addressed at the community level. SakayTayo is a working example of what community-built digital infrastructure looks like when researchers decide to close the gap themselves rather than wait for an institutional solution.

For the Cordillera startup and innovation ecosystem, the story of SakayTayo is also a lesson in speed and intent. Vek and Rey did not pitch the idea, form a company, raise funding, and run a beta test. They read about the problem, built the tool, and launched it during the Lenten break. The app is live, free, and already being used. That pace — from problem to product in one night — is what the community needed and what the formal innovation ecosystem should be learning from.

Register and use SakayTayo at sakaytayo.baguio-benguet.com. The user manual is available at the link below.

App manual and registration: https://sakaytayo.baguio-benguet.com/manual

Source: Northluzon Monitor, Maria Elena Catajan