EDITORIAL - Give the Citom human experiment a try

The Cebu City Traffic Operations and Management or Citom has started manual traffic control operations in at least 23 intersections in the city. What this means is that instead of traffic lights being controlled by an automatic and computerized traffic control system, they are being overridden by Citom traffic enforcers manually directing traffic.

To those who have gotten used to the computerized system and have become distrustful of anything done by human hands, the overriding of the computerized system and the takeover of human traffic enforcers is expected to be met with some derision. But Citom has its reasons for embarking on this experiment and it may be worth everybody's while to just give it a try.

It does not have to take Citom to tell us, however, that automatic and computerized traffic lights only work for as long as motorists exercise both common sense and a strict adherence to traffic regulations. One of the most common causes of gridlocks at intersections is the failure, or downright refusal, of drivers to respect the need of intersections to be clear at all times.

Many, if not most, drivers will move forward on green even if the road ahead is full and traffic is at a standstill, thereby causing blocked intersections and preventing crossing traffic from proceeding by the time their own light turns green. Once untangled, the crossing traffic will not allow a repeat of the blockage and, on green, will move forward and keep on, even if there is nowhere to go.

Pretty soon the intersection will become a chaotic arena of tit for tat, with drivers from every direction of the crossing trying to cut each other off. In the precise language of the Cebuano -- magpina-ugatay na ang tanan -- and if the computers can only react in the way of humans, the traffic lights might eventually simmer and smoke.

Only the presence of real live human traffic enforcers can untangle or prevent such a mess. Traffic enforcers at least command obedience and can stop any flow of traffic from proceeding if there is nowhere to proceed to. They can even orchestrate the squeezing of vehicles into the tiniest of spaces just to unblock an intersection and keep traffic flowing.

There was a time in the early 1980s when Cebu City was very proud of its automatic and computerized traffic system. Acquired from Australia, it was the first automatic and computerized traffic system in the Philippines. Eventually, however, traffic volume grew far beyond the capacity of the road network to bear, and for the great traffic system to manage and control. It is now up to human intervention to untangle the mess.