CEBU, Philippines- It is a fact that, weeks prior to the closure of part of the road at the North Reclamation Area (NRA), the main city’s traffic enforcement group placed visible signage on all roads leading to and from the NRA to inform all motorists of the impending road closure. It is also a fact that these signage were placed in both the main city and the wannabe Kapitolyo City. And, as I and many other motorists found out last Friday, it is also a fact that this road closure lead to a massively snarled traffic situation which clogged traffic veins and arteries in the area for hours.
I’m sure the traffic enforcement group of both cities would defend themselves by saying that they, indeed, informed the public well beforehand. I will agree, the public was informed of the road closure. I will not, however, agree that the public was fully informed beforehand. If you look at the photo of the actual signage, you can see that they do inform motorists and commuters that the road will be closed starting March 5, 2015. But that’s about it. Do they, in any way, shape or form, inform you in advance which alternate routes to take? Unfortunately, no. Even at this day and age where almost every living, breathing human being has a social media account, the traffic enforcement group only posted the rerouting advisory on the day itself.
Now, these dingbats at the traffic enforcement group may argue that since most motorists check their social media account more often than they check on the well-being of their relatives, they decided to post the update at 6:00 a.m. on the day of the road closure to keep it fresh in the minds of the motorists. Well, good morning traffic enforcement group! Did you ever stop to ask if at that unholy hour in the morning, we would actually forget about getting our kids and ourselves ready for school and work and linger on social media sites? Maybe you guys would have that kind of luxury, especially since “wang-wangs” can get you to your destinations sooner than us. But we, thanks to your pathetically, piss-poor traffic management, have to head out early or risk being stuck in horrible rush hour traffic.
And in all truth, the signage you posted is not as informative as your pea-brains make it out to be. An informative signage would have your basic announcement of the inconvenience you are about to cause all of us, (aside from the obviously slow pace of government projects) the reason for the inconvenience, and lastly, alternative routes and options available to all motorists to prevent more-disastrous traffic jams.
But the biggest inconvenience that I noticed related to this most-recent road closure is the presence of numerous “No Entry” signage posted in possible alternate routes. It is bad enough that a major part of road traffic is diverted into roads that already have enough traffic to handle on a regular basis. Closing down side roads to avoid posting additional traffic enforcers who have to actually do a decent day’s work just doesn’t solve the problem.
Creating alternate routes and deploying additional manpower to help motorists cope with this change, plus providing informative directional signage is the right way to handle road closures. The strategy you’ve decided to employ is a strategy that could only be drawn up by a lazy mind. And that is a statement of fact.