Why is it the only time there is a significant traffic tie-up it is because the guys in orange shirts have showed up to "direct" traffic?Normally as chaotic as it is..traffic at least tends to keep moving..until they show up O-|
Why is this surprising to you? I come from a so-called civilized country and invariably when traffic lights went out and cops needed to direct traffic, there was a massive traffic jam while normally (without interference) things would just flow nicely... We used to call them traffic de-regulators.. Vicmico
Could not have been that "Civilized", judging by you description, you probably meant to say that the traffic was flowing while the traffic-lights were working and were actually regulating the traffic but once they stopped working that's when chaos developed. Where I come from the Police is doing a great job of regulating traffic, we even had trained Students that did traffic regulating to help out during festivities and everybody followed their directions without an argument...
First I don`t quite agree with that. For obvious reasons they are send out during rush-hour and to the most trafficed crossings only, so don`t confuse cause and result. Its a bit like claiming, that it only rains, when someone is using their umbrella. Second my experience is, that the problem is not so much the trafic regulators but more ignorant or selfish motorists, who drive into the crossing, even they are signaled to stop. This is for sure a big impediment to the traffic flow. The real underlying problem is, that trafic in Dumaguete is becoming a bit to heavy to not have trafic lights. This worked fine 20 years ago, when population was maybe 80.000 and very few people had cars or motorcycles. But today with population 125.000 and a lot of motorcycles in particular, the citys very simple transport system is increasingly being overwhelmed.
I remember what is now a comical incident to me, it was not so funny at the time. Here in the US the traffic lights went out on a feeder road to a major highway and the police directing traffic were letting one car at a time pass from each of the four directions which was very inefficient. I had the urge to get out of my car and suggest that he let cars from each direction proceed for 2 minutes in turn, but then there would have been no traffic backed up for miles within a half hour and he probably would have had to return to his post guarding the donut shop.
I Bacolod the traffic flows better without traffic lights, the reason? because the drivers of Jeepneys drive off before the lights turn red, and block the other side of the intersection, and its the interpretation of the colours of the lights from the locals, eg, green means go, orange means WTF quick keep going I wont prepare to stop, red means WTFx2 asif I will stop, I will keep going until I have to stop when that fking 50 ton cane truck gets in my way. .
