20 turn slots

Has anybody bothered counting the number of U-turn slots that have been carved into the center island that separates the northbound and southbound lanes of the highway between Bacolod City and Talisay City?

I tried that exercise the other day and I discovered there are 20 official and unofficial turn slots along the highway from the Bacolod City’s Bata flyover to where the highway’s center island disappears in Talisay City proper. That’s a lot of opportunities for accidents, a lot of reasons why that highway is unefficient, and a stern indictment of the local, provincial, and maybe even national government’s inability to regulate the use of a national highway.

If you are northbound, the first U-turn slot is a doozy. It wasn’t originally there but the public utility vehicles that needed to make a U-turn to get to the terminal across the street decided the original U-turn slot that was constructed a few meters ahead was too far and inconvenient for them so they made their own. By arbitrarily moving the U-turn slot to fit their needs, those people made it a lot more unsafe for the motorists exiting the flyover but since they have never been considerate of the needs and safety of the public that doesn’t ride their vehicles, they did it anyway. What makes this first U-turn even more irritating is that the inutile people who are supposed to be in charge of these things did absolutely nothing and even condoned the act by making it official in paving that terribly unsafe U-turn slot.

 That little story of how the first U-turn slot you meet upon exiting Bacolod City was born gives you an idea of how all the other 20 U-turn slots along less than 3 kilometers of highway probably came to be. Somebody decided they wanted one, so they made one. And because nobody from the local, provincial or national government told them otherwise, their “improvements” became permanent even if it shouldn’t be there. All because nobody cares if those turn slots make the area unsafe.

The newest turn slot that has been created along that center island faces the newly opened road that leads to the Ruins and the Airport road. This turn slot is currently just a break in the center island, unpaved and muddy. Those coming from that new road wanting to cross the highway and turn left towards Bacolod City created it. It is very easy to predict that the new turn slot will soon be made official when some unthinking official will decide it is a good idea to pave that dangerous addition to what should be a smoothly flowing national highway.

Aside from the phenomenon of the sprouting turn slots, there is also that terribly-conceived DPWH weighbridge that is on the wrong side of the road. It adds to the inefficiency and the hazards of that stretch of highway by making fully loaded northbound cane trucks line up on the rightmost (fast) lane, slowly cross against the flow of supposedly-fast-moving-traffic to get to the weighbridge, and then cross the highway again after being weighed to get back on its merry northbound way. Only in the Philippines could you see incompetence of that scale being tolerated by both motorists and government officials alike.

I know that particular 3-kilometer stretch of road is currently experiencing some sort of economic boom and establishments are sprouting all over the place but if there is nobody to regulate the way they are cutting up the center island this highway will either cease to become a highway or it will soon become one of the most accident prone areas in the island.

This situation highlights the need for a Metro Bacolod Development Body that should, among its duties, come up with a proper master plan for the highways that link the cities comprising what should be Metro Bacolod. Think about it: 20 turn slots wouldn’t have been haphazardly created on the center island of a national highway if there were somebody in charge of that area. If you ask me, there should be only be 2-3 turn slots and ideally a service road leading to those turn slots because 20 is not only unsafe, it slows down the flow of traffic along the most commonly used road between those big cities in this province.

20 turn slots in 3 kilometers gives an average of a turn slot for every 150 meters. That means a driver using that mostly-6-lane national highway traveling at 80kmh will have to watch out for a vehicle crossing their path every 6.8 seconds. What kind of a highway is that? How can the people supposed to be responsible for that highway allow that to happen? Or a better question is: are there even people in government service who are supposed to be responsible for that highway?*

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