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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — The push for a Smart Traffic Light Management System in Dumaguete City has been on for some time now, with the Administration trying hard to prove its need.

They want to install traffic lights in 20 pre-determined intersections in the City because, like their other ideas of one-way street schemes and new roads and bridges, they think it is the missing key to reducing or eliminating traffic congestion in Dumaguete.

There’s been stiff opposition to the idea in the City Council because our streets were never designed to adapt to traffic lights, making the proposal seem like a capricious project rather than a sensible necessity.

Those who oppose the idea have argued that there will have to be changes to the streets before the project can be feasible.

For instance, most of the streets in the City are two-lane streets, with the exception of a few that could possibly accommodate four lanes, although not their entire lengths.

Suppose the project is pushed through without the necessary modifications, a vehicle wanting to make a left turn at any intersection controlled by traffic lights, will be blocking those intending to go straight. This will surely cause motorists to unsafely squeeze by on the street shoulder to avoid being unnecessarily delayed, a practice so commonly observed in the City’s streets, even as I type this article.

And because every intersection will have opposing traffic flow, they WILL become bottlenecks at every green light.

In contrast, if there were four lanes, those turning left could stay on the left lane while through traffic and right turns will remain unimpeded on the right lane. Does this make sense?

The idea of modifying the streets to make them more traffic light-compliant, although complex as far as the budget and time to undertake it are concerned, may just pale in comparison to the problem of undisciplined drivers.

The need for four-lane streets is demonstrated everyday by these drivers as they double up on the lanes. During peak hours, you’d think there were four lanes by looking at the lines of vehicles when in fact, there are only two! This would be especially apparent if viewed from above, for instance, from the top floor of any streetside building.

They have been left undisciplined for such a long time (since wheels started to roll on the City’s streets) that to introduce a sense of organization and orderliness that traffic lights are designed to do would be a mountain to conquer in and of itself.

With that, the problem has just been upped. You may ask how these drivers may be weaned into the idea of traffic lights if there were no traffic lights. A very good question, because if the City committed itself to the millions of pesos that the project would cost only to find out that it doesn’t work as intended, because of these drivers, the whole thing would end up an exercise in wastefulness. No one wants that!

Anywhere in the world, traffic controlled by actual people will always be better than with traffic lights.

If that were true, you may ask, then why have traffic lights? Well, the answer is simple: if every intersection in cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Manila, or even Dumaguete were controlled by people 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, how many people would have to be hired? Besides, humans are susceptible to the ravages of weather.

So you see, traffic lights, with their timing plans controlled by a central computer, are the most logical and efficient solution—they are efficient, and they don’t get hungry or sick.

So if human-controlled intersections are better, why not test the traffic light idea in the busiest intersections of Dumaguete every day, throughout the day, for a specified period, with devices that mimic actual traffic lights?

I’m sure there are brilliant brains in the City somewhere who can design such a training scheme on a massive scale. How long it will take for the undisciplined drivers to be somewhat disciplined, and used to the idea of YELLOW (prepare to stop), RED (stop), GREEN (go) depends entirely on how well and how long the training is conducted.

Of course, they will also have to start strictly enforcing traffic laws! After all, when traffic lights are left to control traffic, there will be no traffic personnel assigned to every intersection to apprehend those who run red lights, for instance, otherwise, the idea of traffic lights would have failed.

The opposition to this initiative may sound unfounded to some but unfortunately, Dumaguete drivers were not born into traffic lights. Many probably haven’t even driven in a City that has them.

And most importantly, almost all do not know there are consequences to violating traffic laws in Dumaguete City because there hasn’t been any meaningful enforcement of those laws. Sad, but there it is.

What is it with the people who produce project proposals for the City? Why couldn’t they spend the time to run their ideas through in their heads, and bounce all the possible negatives against the positives. It isn’t hard to imagine Dumaguete with traffic lights, and how its drivers would likely behave under purely electro-mechanical direction. They can’t even behave well enough under the eyes of actual, live Traffic Management Office personnel! How will they behave when directed only by traffic lights?

It is my opinion that the money the Administration wants to spend on these lights will be better spent to rehabilitate the City’s CCTV system at the moment.

I heard that the promised maintenance of the system did not really pan out as hoped, and as said by the City government, leaving the system with so many cameras currently out of commission.

The CCTV system, as a deterrent to crime, is now about as useful as breasts on a trashcan. The current state of this once-ambitious project was foretold by some people, even those in positions in the City government, but were they listened to? No! And now this!

I have a feeling the same fate is waiting for their proposed traffic lights if they would again have their way without opposition.

Sure, traffic lights are something Dumagueteños could be proud of, although not so much for being first to have them in the Province, as Bayawan City has that particular distinction.

However, there are things that need to be ironed out first, and they’re not minor things as the most important one is widening the streets to turn them into four-lane thoroughfares.

Without doing that first, the entire project would only produce one big clusterf*ck, but it would be another feather in the cap of the present Administration, right behind the new bridges and roads.

The people have seen all the efforts by the local Administration to ALLEVIATE THE TRAFFIC CONGESTION in the City. This line looks familiar to you, doesn’t it, having been repeated in countless articles now, but what else have all the expenditure on roads, bridges, and, if realized, traffic lights been for, if not for that purpose? You’ll stop seeing this line in my articles just as soon as the things built to ALLEVIATE THE TRAFFIC CONGESTION have actually ALLEVIATED THE TRAFFIC CONGESTION.

There is one thing glaringly common among all these things—they all cost millions of pesos.

It doesn’t matter if the money has been borrowed or not because it’s not like the City is free of other problems that money could solve. If they just put a pause on one of these projects, and concentrated on the enforcement of traffic laws, maybe, just maybe, we would be able to see better results. Besides, isn’t the least expensive worth trying first?

Like I have said in my previous articles in this column, the City Mayor has done wonderful things that no other mayor in the City’s long history has ever done. It is not even likely that his achievements can be matched by anyone else. All I would like everyone to see is the fact that he’s done everything but enforce the traffic laws.

With the way drivers are in Dumaguete City, without extensive planning and improvement of the current infrastructure, traffic lights may just serve as starting pistols every time the light turns green, and the limit lines on the pavement, like the starting blocks in a race.

I believe the opposition to this proposal in the City Council is well-founded, and demonstrates fiscal responsibility. Everything a city government does must be in answer to a need, and must produce the consequential effect. The effect must be obvious and measurable. Otherwise, it will be nothing but a fart in the wind!

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Author’s email: [email protected]

 

 

 

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