Redundancies

BENCHWARMER
Ramon Dacawi

That traffic light that replaced the old and far more reliable and synchronized one at the foot of Session Rd. works like an analog clock -- but with only one hand. Mang Swanny Dicang, known for his often irrepressible and sometimes irreverent sense of humor, swears he owns such a curiosity item - not a traffic light but a wrist watch with only one hand or pointer.

“To get the time, all you got to do is press a button at the side of the watch,” he explains with a salesman’s pitch. “Pressing the button activates the single arrow or hand, which then points to the nearest person with a regular watch. You then can ask him or her what time it is.” What if nobody’s around with a watch or you’re alone in some mountain or wilderness? Foresight dictates you hire somebody with a watch to be with you, Mang Swanny advises.

Motorists daily slowed down by the new traffic light that turns red before they know it see the analogy in Mang Swanny’s single-handed analog watch. They swear the traffic light can’t work alone. It needs a traffic officer to effectively direct and ease vehicle flow. This is in contrast to their view that the alternate flow of vehicles is smoother at the Abanao-Harrison-Magsaysay intersection when there’s no traffic officer disrupting the synchronous timing of the traffic light changes.

A similar, yet far more costly redundancy sits nearby, also at the foot of Session Rd. It’s that white box atop the road island at the foot of the pedestrian overpass where a mini-post office used to operate. The gadget measures, in red LED (light emitting diode) and technical terms, the extent of pollution from vehicle smoke emissions. It works with deadly accuracy, measuring the rate of smog – to how many particulates per million, whatever that means, any time of the day or night.

The measuring gadget was bought to the tune of P10 to P12 million. It replaced a simpler, far cheaper, less accurate gadget. The new, expensive gadget is telling us what the old one already told us or what we already know even without a measuring machine: with vehicles emitting exhaust while on idle or revving up in a low-lying area surrounded by tall buildings, the foot of Session Rd. is the most smog-polluted portion of the city.

The replaced, less expensive gadget would have sufficed to validate what our eyes can see. The P10 to P12 million could have been used in the actual campaign against smoke-belchers to reduce smog rather than just accurately measuring it.

Before he was replaced and reassigned somewhere, a then regional executive director of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources here seriously announced plans to buy two more expensive smog measuring gadgets for installation in other parts of the city.

Given our limited givens as a Third World city trying to plan according to standards of the wealthy West, let me be redundant for the second time twice: It’s better to use P20 to P24 million for the actual campaign to reduce smog rather than for the opportunity to be reminded daily of the extent of pollution.

A mere pittance from so huge a sum (in Third World standards) would be enough to fund a contest to reward a volunteer in the clean-air campaign who apprehends the most number of smoke-belching vehicles or violators of the anti-smoking ordinance. It would be more than enough to frame a commendation for a traffic officer who books the most number of jaywalkers, errant pedestrians or drivers still blind to the series of traffic lights recently installed along Session and Harrison roads.

Simple traffic obedience was one of seven simple resolutions that mayor Mauricio Domogan asked of city hall employees and residents in his message for this new year.

Time was when we needed no traffic lights, much less traffic officers, to tell us when to cross or pass through Session Road. More than ever, we now need them both.

It will not be redundant for the police office to field traffic cops right there along Session Road. We need them, not to remind us to drive and walk according to the dictates of the traffic lights, but to book us for being color-blind.

A sampling of enforcement can be the first step to restoring the long-lost discipline and sense of community that the old Baguio was known for and we residents were so proud of. (e-mail: mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments).