‘… often we see the traffic lights in operation but a traffic cop directs traffic anyway regardless of what the traffic lights show.’
FORT Bonifacio Development Corporation (FBDC) folks have taken a major step in helping ease traffic along 5th Avenue of Bonifacio Global City (BGC).
Fifth Avenue is the main road that begins from the corner of St. Luke’s Global City and the S&R warehouse club to the intersection where McKinley Road ends. The latter, of course, is the acacia tree-lined thoroughfare that starts at EDSA and meanders in between the Forbes villages towards BGC.
The major step that FBDC did was “open” a thoroughfare called “McKinley Parkway” that is the extension of McKinley Road into BGC. By allowing vehicles to traverse this road when coming from 7th Avenue or SM Aura, in order to exit towards McKinley Road towards EDSA, traffic flow on 5th Avenue was greatly reduced.
Except that for whatever reason, FBDC only keeps the Parkway open at certain times of the day, usually during rush hour, closing it again during off peak hours.
I think that’s confusing and I don’t know why the BGC authorities do that. Traffic flow is built on habit — you learn which routes to take going from place to place over time — but if traffic authorities confuse you by sometimes opening a thoroughfare and sometimes closing it then the habit takes a longer time to ingrain in the minds of motorists.
I wish they’d keep the Parkway open 24/7, 7 days a week. And make the signs clearer.
This reminds me of a sight I saw on the autobahns of Germany when I first visited in 1983.
The traffic lights were hooded at some intersections and I asked why this was so. The answer was very German reasoning — the lights are hooded when the traffic authorities do not want to use them or want them ignored. And I got it — hooding the lights protected their integrity and every motorist knows that when they’re being used you better follow and you ignore them at your peril.
The same can’t be said here, for often we see the traffic lights in operation but a traffic cop directs traffic anyway regardless of what the traffic lights show. So motorists honk their horn in irritation, are confused, and more seriously the system of traffic lights suffers an integrity problem because people get to see that they don’t always deserve to be followed.
So very simple, a perfect example of systems thinking — why it works in one place and why it doesn’t work in others.
Surely, you can guess which is a good descriptor for us!
