Modern Traffic Light System in Davao City

Just saw this video (via Inday Sara Duterte‘s unofficial Facebook page). Apparently, Davao City is equipped with a modern traffic light system similar to California’s.

Awesome, isn’t it? I haven’t seen the pedestrian countdown timer, but maybe I need to be more observant the next time I go to downtown Davao. 🙂

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11 comments

  1. I don’t know, maybe it’s just because I grew up in Germany, but I see nothing modern with the traffic light system. Those buttons that pedestrians can “push” on for them to pass (supposedly faster) isn’t helping. Because there’s a specific algorithm/system set on which goes green, red, etc… so clicking the button isn’t helping (parang dekorasyon lang). Tska ang liit ng oras ng mga pedestrians tumawid sa iilang kanto.

  2. Haha! Kevin, I agree with you on the time for pedestrian crossing. Good thing you mentioned the part on pedestrian buttons not working. It reminded me of a Yahoo! article that I read a few months ago. Check it out here.

  3. don’t you think they fix the roads first?

  4. andami na po nito sa Manila, sa Global City at sa Cgayan de Oro City….

    • you must be kidding about cagayan de oro. what they got there is the obsolete timer based traffic lights. the one you see in davao is the pedestrian priority button timer while the vehicle traffic lights are sensorized not timer based.

  5. Parang elevator yan, push the button once, It won’t go faster even if you push it many times.

    You are right it’s exactly the same as the ones in california.

  6. i agree that they should fix the road or street canals to prevent flooding in case of typhon comes rather buy those stop light.i grew up in manila and now living overseas .i wonder also if pedestrians and drivers will follow the stop light coz from wat i observe pedestrians just cross even though they are not allowed to cross.at the same time cars dont give pedestrians right of way. what we need in our country is discipline.

  7. i’ve been in manila for some time and been comparing the traffic here and at manila. unlike there at manila, the traffic lights here in davao is “sensorized”. it means that it senses if a vehicle stops on a mark. you can visibly see it on the road. the road has cut marks and then filled w/ some kind of material, maybe magnetic in purpose around the intersection and is connected to the traffic light.

    above the traffic light, you can see a mini satellite dish. all traffic light has it. i think the purpose of that thing is for that the traffic light can connect and communicate to each other. so that, if gridlock happens on an intersection then the traffic light on that intersection can communicate to traffic light around. the traffic light nearby can make adjustment on the number of vehicle can pass.

  8. Angelo,

    Nothing so proud about the “sensorized” traffic system in Davao.

    All traffic controller phase time must be pre-defined into the controller. The “inductive loop sensor” senses for vehicle presence. If there is no “presence” for a defined period of time in the controller, say, 8 seconds, the controller jump to the next phase, hence, reducing lost green time.

    This is called “actuated” mode.

    ITS is completely another science. We can sit and discuss about SCATS.

    • we have this system in cebu since the early 90’s and nobody talked about it or saying we are proud to be one of the first in south east asia.

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