Traffic

Traffic in the Philippines is very notable in the sense that it is thick and embedded enough in our daily life to be a valid excuse to an important meeting or to be merely taken as part of our culture. This sent me thinking of alternatives. If number coding is already present, the roads already widened, and traffic lights already installed, what more could we do to alleviate this problem?

The best alternative that I can suggest is to add more “roads”, which would probably take decades to build. As I was thinking of the alternatives, I visualized the problem in the form of an internet model. I likened the present traffic situation to the dial-up system and the alternative to be the wi-fi system. Hence, if I was to work around that model, the highways would be the cables in the dial-up system while the additional “roads” would be the wi-fi system.

How could we create these “roads”? What forms could they take? My answers to that would be by utilizing the space above the usual roads and by inventing flying cars. In the same way that the wi-fi system is not constrained by the traffic in the cable, flying cars have more space to travel on air since the traffic would be dispersed then.

However, the next question then would be, “How long will the thinning out of traffic last?” My answer would be “as long as there are unchartered and unregulated air routes on a certain area”. I believe that despite the extent of the space available to flying cars, such is still susceptible to traffic. Systems, though they create order, also accommodate traffic. They set pre-defined routes which contain movements. And such movements, when contained, build up and clog passageways. There lies the dilemma. Maybe next time, to escape the law of impenetrability, we could just invent teleports.

-Michelle P. M. Sabitsana