Red means...

I wait for the lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.

The major roadways of the metropolis are “decorated” with railings of all heights, colors and designs, as well as cement barriers and fiberglass pylons, metal posts and chains, and assorted other devices used as dividers for human and vehicular traffic. These serve to prevent pedestrians from crossing where they shouldn’t, vehicles from turning where they shouldn’t and being on lanes they shouldn’t be on, as well as keeping them in the lanes where they should be. Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone has yet invented a railing that effectively keeps determined pedestrians from crossing, or a barrier that can effectively prevent counterflow traffic.

Waiting in traffic one morning recently at the Shaw Blvd./Edsa intersection in front of the Shangri-La Plaza mall, where new yellow and black railings about three feet high are, I presume, intended to keep people from randomly crossing and/or getting on and off jeepneys, an agile and I guess impatient young man managed to leap over the railings and run across. On a section of Ortigas Avenue in front of the Greenhills Shopping Center which has railings and plants and large signs telling people to use the pedestrian overpass, some bars on the railings have either been sawed off or bent to create a space large enough for a normal-sized person to squeeze through. Authorities patch up these gaps every so often, but as long as the overpass remains a distance from where the jeepneys stop, people will cross where they will.

Turning left from Ortigas into Wilson Street where traffic can really pile up, cement barriers were set up to keep vehicles in their lanes. The other week, however, even such sturdy barriers were challenged; some large vehicle must have rammed into them, sending them all askew and causing even worse traffic in the busy intersection.

I cannot help but wonder what it is in us, here in this dear city of ours, that switches to unruly and wild when we get behind the wheel. Even benign, law-abiding citizens get a little wacky when driving in the streets of Manila. A friend of ours recently told of finally getting her driver’s license in California. On her first try she flunked both the written and driving tests; the former she attributed to not having reviewed fully. The latter, she said, was the result of 20 years’ driving experience in Manila. For example, when she was docked points for not stopping when the light turned yellow, she told her examiner, “But in Manila, yellow means you go faster so you don’t get the red!”