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Category Archives: Highways and Streets
New wide roads lead to more crashes?
I was in Tagaytay several times the past year and recently and couldn’t help but notice all the wide and widened roads in Cavite Province. Driving our vehicle, I also noticed how many were speeding along these roads and that many refuse to give way at intersections unless it’s signalized. We caught the terrifying images of a fresh crash this morning as we traveled home from Tagaytay. There were three wrecks at the intersection of the Crisanto Delos Reyes Road and the East West Road. It took quite some time for the rescue people to get there based on how long we got stuck in traffic just a few hundred meters from the crash site.
Wide roads and aggressive driving are just two major factors or contributors towards road crashes. I wonder what are the crash rates along these roads in Cavite Province. I also wonder how fast first responders, especially medical staff, could arrive on site for these crashes. The police were there first but looked helpless and couldn’t attend to those involved in the wrecked cars. Are they even trained for first aid? Or was this part of their training to just wait for competent medical staff to arrive?
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From Blog to Vlog
I was checking the submissions of our students for an assignment that was given to them earlier in this concluding semester. As I watched and rewatched the vlogs they were supposed to create in relation to civil engineering, I was surprised to see this blog being cited by at least 3 students who chose topics related to transportation. I am not into creating videos or vlogs like those you find on YouTube or TikTok (at least not for now?) but I appreciate the production and creativity of many of our students as they attempted to articulate civil engineering and civil engineering history through their videos. Most amusing to me were one student who sang the entire vlog about her commute along Marcos Highway and another who used Minecraft for his vlog about construction. While I can’t share their work here due to privacy policies at the university, I can say that these among other excellent works by our students show that most of them understood what civil engineering was all about.
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Flash floods in May
It finally rained all over Metro Manila and Rizal today. This morning’s rains were light. The drizzle was enough though to prevent me from walking the dogs. The afternoon rains were more intense though in bursts rather than sustained. Still, this resulted in flash floods everywhere. The photo below shows the situation along Katipunan Road in White Plains.
The flash floods bring us again to the flood control mess that remains unresolved. It is not just a problem of the poor, or the middle class but of everyone affected by the floods. It’s just that many are more severely affected than others. The photo above might be a slight concern of the more wealthy people in that neighborhood. They probably don’t need to worry of flood waters entering their homes and damaging properties. Other people are not as lucky and have to deal with floods for a major part of the year. The suffering is real and it’s also because many chose to elect inept, incompetent and corrupt people who themselves enabled other inept, incompetent and corrupt people to proliferate and operate with no regards for morality, even humanity.
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Article share: Why Complete Streets Design Benefits Everyone
Here is another quick share of an article; this time on Complete Streets. I guess many are aware of the AI-generated street transformations that are now being shared across many social media platforms. These show street transformations of many sections and intersections.
Source: Why Complete Streets Design Benefits Everyone
Again, it is important to have context sensitive solutions. This extends to street transformations. Some may look cool (AI tools have enabled non-architects, non-engineers, etc. to produce nice renderings) but should be tempered for the street or highway functions as well as the actual volume of people and vehicles running along these.
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Congested Katipunan again
During the Christmas break, we were reminded just how Katipunan Avenue can be congested due to the trips generated by the institutions along it. These are mainly the schools such as Ateneo, Miriam and UP. Based on my observations and experiences over the past decades though (I started attending UP in the late 1980s), the main culprit is Ateneo with all the private vehicles it generates for its students in all levels (Grade School, High School and College).
What “normal” traffic looks like on a typical weekday along Katipunan Avenue
My commute during the break is usually under 1 hour (e.g,, 40-50 minutes). But during the times when there’s school, it’s always more than an hour (e.g., 75 to 105 minutes). Will the situation improve? Will there be a mass transit system along C-5 to alleviate the traffic conditions? We can probably hope so but it doesn’t seem to be in the near horizon right now. The Metro Manila subway, after all, is expected to be operational in the 2030s!
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On street transformations using AI
My social media feed is full of images generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The street transformations are generated using a variety of AI tools. I’ve tried Canva and Gemini in producing similar images of street transformations; an exercise I’ve included in my undergraduate and graduate classes for more than a decade now but using their sketching and software (CAD, Sketch-up, etc.) skills to do the transformations. The photos below show an example of transformation along the University of the Philippines Diliman Academic Oval using Google Gemini.
The original photo I took at the UP Academic Oval
The first attempt at replacing the orange bollards/barriers with something that blended with the campus.
The second attempt showing plant boxes instead of the fence in the previous photo.
I think it’s possible to have excellent transformations of whatever roads or streets there are. One just needs to prompt or instruct the AI well enough to obtain these alternative designs. While the transformations are nice though, context is still important. Many of the transformations circulating on social media call for almost all major streets to be transformed. (Kulang na lang pati expressway gawan ng transformation.) Advocacy is good but context-sensitive solutions require a more constructive and cooperative. It certainly can do without being combative or antagonistic.
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On the chronic congestion along Ortigas Avenue Extension
I previously wrote about the counterflow scheme along Ortigas Avenue Extension. While this is usually implemented during the mornings. A similar scheme is not applied in the afternoons or evenings. Apparently, the directional distribution in the afternoons and evenings is not suitable for a counterflow scheme. The photos below show the typical eastbound traffic as seen from the Manggahan Floodway bridge.
Typical weekday evening traffic along Ortigas Avenue Extension
The photos show that the traffic along the opposing direction (westbound) is as heavy as the eastbound traffic. This means a counterflow scheme similar to that in the mornings cannot be implemented during this period.
I have mentioned in the previous article that the corridor already required a mass transit system since the 1980s. Despite the operations of several bus companies over the past decades, these have not been enough (together with jeepneys and vans) to serve the demand along the corridor. It is not uncommon to find so many people stranded along the corridor and waiting to get a ride even during the early mornings. While Lines 2, 3 and 7 were being constructed, people in Rizal who have long endured the traffic along Ortigas Avenue Extension could only wonder why a transit system has not been provided for them. Will the proposed Line 4 be finally constructed? When will it be completed? What could be the traffic impacts of construction considering the limited space available for the construction? Should commuters prepare for more miserable travel once construction is underway?
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After getting engrossed with EDSA, is Marcos Highway next?
If you monitored the news articles and social media post over the past two decades, there seems to be an obsession for EDSA. Circumferential Road 4 is the busiest corridor in Metro Manila, stretching across several jurisdictions including Caloocan, Quezon City, Mandaluyong, Makati and Pasay City. Aside from the MMDA, national agencies like the DPWH and DOTr have been heavily involved in traffic schemes and transportation infrastructure development along the corridor. These include variants of the travel demand management (TDM) scheme commonly called number coding. Since the 1990s, there’s the Line 3 and several overpasses/flyovers and underpass that have been constructed along major intersections (e.g., EDSA-Shaw, EDSA-Ortigas, EDSA-Kamuning, EDSA-Quezon Avenue, etc.). Nowadays, people are more into the EDSA carousel and most recently the pavement rehabilitation for EDSA. It seems we failed to realize that EDSA is just one corridor. There are others that also demand attention including those in other parts of the country.
Recently, a “carmaggedon” along Marcos Highway was in the headlines or shall I say was trending in social media. There was a lot of excitement for what has been a recurring nightmare to those residing along the corridor. I recall something worse occurred more than 15 years ago (pre-Ondoy), before social media and influencers and digital creators. At the time, Line 2 terminated at Santolan Station. And even back then, the MMDA insisted on playing with their U-turn scheme. I don’t recall a more in-depth study that could have involved micro-simulation modeling being done for the corridor. And since then, populations and traffic have grown steadily and as I’ve written about previously, the extension of Line 2 to Masinag seems to have had little impact on traffic. And so here we are with the MMDA still insisting on tweaking their U-turn schemes and relying mainly on gut-feel instead of a more scientific approach that may actually lead to more sound solutions for the corridor.
Approach to Marcos Highway from Felix Avenue – that’s the elevated Line 2 superstructure behind the Cainta arch.
Intersection of Marcos Highway, Felix Avenue and Gil Fernando Avenue – there’s a major foot bridge installed here so people can cross at the intersection, which used to be a signalized junction before the MMDA opted for U-turns for Marcos Highway sections under its jurisdiction.
Marcos Highway section fronting the Ayala Feliz Mall – the MMDA has played with the location of the U-turn slots in the vicinity of the Marcos Highway-Amang Rodriguez-J.P. Rizal intersection as they tried to determine the “optimum” locations of these slots.
Of course, there is also the case of Commonwealth Avenue. How many carmaggedons have occurred along that corridor? Isn’t it an everyday thing there? And there’s also Ortigas Avenue Extension and many other roads and streets where congestion seems to have been accepted as the norm. How do we make travel easier for most people? How do we improve commutes given the constraints and realities concerning behavior and choices?
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Complicated intersections in Rizal – Tikling Junction
There are several major intersections in Rizal Province. Among them are 3 junctions in Cainta, Taytay and Antipolo – Cainta Junction (Ortigas Ave Ext.-Felix Ave), Masinag Junction (Marcos Highway-Sumulong Highway), and Tikling or Kaytikling Junction. The first two are signalized intersections. The last one is supposed to be a roundabout. All three are problematic in various ways and have been associated with congestion along the major roads intersecting at these junctions.
Tikling is quite interesting as traffic seems to have worsened after it was set up as a roundabout. Taytay enforcers have been deployed here but they seem to contribute more to worsening congestion rather than easing it. Motorists familiar with the area will tell you that traffic is better when there are no enforcers. Unfortunately, not all motorists here are from the area or are familiar with the rules for navigating or positioning at a roundabout. And so the intersection is often constricted with vehicles whose drivers and riders don’t practice courtesy.
Perhaps a combination of geometric improvements and more clever enforcement/management can improve intersection performance?
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Caught (up) in traffic 