You gotta love ABC ch.5 and MMDA’s collaboration in providing mobile service to people on the road for real time traffic updates. They are accurate and very useful in navigating the major streets of EDSA, C-5, Roxas blvd, España and Quezon Avenue til Commonwealth.
This ups the service ante MMDA provides online from their usually reliable twitter account. The twitter account provides hourly updates, the Interaksyon page gives data as you need it.
Now, if you look at the screen shot of their page taken at 11pm at night notice EDSA northbound of FB Harrison and Taft Avenue in the red(heavy traffic) with the streets before and after it is green(light). If there’s unusual trouble they’d usually give it a mark and say what is wrong when you click on it. If you send a query/tweet to their handle they’d pretty much answer the standard
Due to large volume of vehicles po
.
It seems acceptable because Edsa has a bottleneck where the four lanes is reduced to three as it approaches MRT Taft. But that’s not what makes the traffic bad. If volume or large number of vehicles is the problem then why does it not at least taper off as it passes Tramo. Meaning, the bottleneck from 4 lanes to 3 lanes is not that big of an adjustment. If there is a huge number of vehicles northbound it should at least ease in from heavy traffic status to moderate traffic then light traffic. But it is red and heavy on taft then green afterwards. Therefore the problem is not just of sudden volume converging at taft but the congestion and its main cause: unruly jeeps and buses.
Anybody passing by that route can see that the problem are the jeep and buses taking up time and lanes on a limited space. Heck, the whole troop of MMDA and Pasay traffic know what causes the congestion. They’re just too busy looking for other profitable violations. This is the same experience we have in Cubao, where the bus terminals are abound. There are no changes in strategy to correct it. MMDA seem to be content in the excuse they type in every time : Volume. MMDA seem to think that the technology in place is a form of solution to avoid troublesome routes. Why not use it as a tool? Why not use it’s data to improve traffic and eliminate speculations that jeeps and buses can create chaos there because some people are paid to look the other way and not hear the noise.
The technology we have will only be truly useful if we utilise it completely. MMDA should listen to voices and not dismiss it as noise. Addressing that is the best Volume control.
danDAman 