“MMDA should evaluate the impact of protected bicycle lanes to the worsening traffic congestion”
Travel time in the Metro area has significantly slowed down, indicating traffic congestion has worsened.
EDSA, for example, which the MMDA considers as the traffic battle ground and has devoted a lot of its time trying to improve traffic flow, appears to be losing ground because travel time has unquestionably slowed down to a crawl especially during rush hours.
The question is why is this so in spite of the many measures taken by the MMDA to improve traffic flow along the 24-kilometer busiest thoroughfare in the country.
The bus carousel, for instance, is one project designed to lessen the congestion along EDSA but there is now talk of doing away with it.
I myself experienced this when it took us two hours 10 minutes to negotiate a distance of about four kilometers from the Power Plant to White Plains.
As I found out while crawling through the EDSA traffic, the reasons were a combination of lack of driver discipline, confusing traffic signals and poor management of the Shaw-EDSA intersection.
It used to be that EDSA was a six-lane divided highway.
Due to MRT 3, however, the road was reduced to five lanes.
The several overpasses and underpasses constructed also affected traffic flow.
One good example of this is the EDSA-Buendia intersection.
Recently, due to the clamor to put up bicycle lanes, about 1.5 meters on both sides of the road have been set aside as protected bike lanes.
Add the many cement and plastic barriers on the road to canalize U-turning vehicles and it would not be too difficult to see why the traffic is worsening.
All these things are negatively impacting traffic flow along EDSA.
The lane reserved for the bus carousel for instance has actually intruded into the other lanes.
With the protected bicycles lanes, all other vehicles have been relegated to using much narrower lanes. This means EDSA is no longer a five-lane divided highway, and with the volume of vehicles increasing, congestion would be the natural consequence.
So, what should MMDA do?
I am sure there are things the agency would like to do but the trick is to be able to select a few projects that will have the biggest impact on improving travel time.
Few things come to mind.
One is for MMDA to hurry up in replacing the traffic signaling system. Our manually adjusted traffic signals are already a relic of the past and should be replaced by the so-called intelligent traffic signals. The second is to modernize the current MMDA traffic operation center whose capability is limited. With these two changes, there would be a quantum change in MMDA’s capability to respond to traffic problems.
The rest, as they say, would simply be icing on the cake like better training for traffic enforcers, regular traffic educational programs especially for professional drivers, better government coordination and minor engineering undertakings that can significantly improve traffic flow.
Let me give one example of a minor project that can improve traffic flow immensely.
The cycle time of the traffic lights at the EDSA-Shaw intersection needs to be adjusted.
The right and left turning Shaw vehicles entering EDSA are given more than two minutes of green light while the EDSA vehicles are only given 65 seconds of green time to cross Shaw but actually only uses 45 seconds.
This is because a traffic enforcer is stopping EDSA vehicles from crossing Shaw after only 45 seconds and giving the remaining 20 seconds to pedestrians who should be using the pedestrian overpass.
This is causing the buildup of vehicles along EDSA.
Vehicles on EDSA should, therefore, have more green time.
The current management of the Shaw-EDSA intersection is too complicated and needs to be simplified. That intersection should also have more CCTVs and lighting for more effective and efficient management.
And if the undisciplined drivers on the two most outer lanes along EDSA can be prevented from using the Shaw underpass and made to proceed straight to the EDSA-Shaw intersection, then traffic flow in the area will improve tremendously.
The problem along EDSA is not only at the Shaw-EDSA intersection.
The U-turn areas where barriers are placed are also causing a lot of problems because of motorists forming additional lanes.
Also, the cement barriers are often misaligned, intruding to the other lanes resulting in unnecessary congestion.
Traffic management is a very dynamic undertaking that needs 24 hour monitoring.
It is not an activity that local governments or in this case MMDA can leave unattended for hours because traffic situations are constantly changing.
It is for this reason that it must have a state of the art traffic operation center to be able to react in real time when the traffic situation demands.
As that Korean rock star said when he experienced the Metro traffic, “it is unmatched.”
But it would greatly help MMDA’s efforts if there is some kind of an overall road map to follow.
If there is none, it should endeavor to develop one with the help of competent people either inside or outside the government.
What is happening now is that MMDA is simply juggling whatever tools they have to try to keep traffic moving.
But, as we can see, this is often not enough.
One last point. MMDA should evaluate the impact of protected bicycle lanes to the worsening traffic congestion.
Half a lane lost in the entire Metro road system can have a negative impact on traffic flow as San Juan City just found out.
In this case, it all boils down to cost benefit analysis.
Anyway, just food for thought for MMDA.