Here and There

I was in Southern Mindanao with my family this weekend for summer vacation. We visited Davao and South Cotabato throughout the trip and something caught my attention that had me thinking. No it wasn't the awesome mountain ranges and resorts and all that. The people of Davao (I find it awkward referring them as Davaoeños because the spelling is kind of weird) were very disciplined most notably when it comes to traffic rules. Of course, that is not to say Davao is the perfect utopia everyone's dreaming of -- it has its share of flaws as I've seen in it's local news. But the people of Davao could boast being very disciplined.
I'm not a fan of comparing two cities because every city, every culture and every group of people are unique in their own ways, but for the sake of making a point, let's compare Iloilo City and Davao City in terms of traffic discipline.
In Davao City, there are very few traffic police officers guiding the busy streets and reprimanding erring drivers and pedestrians. All that's in abundance are traffic lights. Here in Iloilo City, we have an (over)abundance of traffic police officers. But despite all that, we suffer from congested roads day in and day out.
Despite having few law enforcers actually enforcing the law, Davao City's streets isn't clogged with vehicles even in the day time. Of course, one could argue that Davao has two two-lane roads compared to Iloilo's usual one two-lane roads. But put in to consideration that most vehicles using Davao's road are huge buses and trucks. If not for disciplined drivers, passengers and pedestrians, the city's roads are bound to clog not by the sheer number of vehicles but by the size of them.
Going back to the traffic law enforcers issue, Davao's traffic police officers (whose uniforms looked dangerously close to that worn by out "Chocolate Boys") are few in numbers and they are actually out there, doing their jobs. Here in Iloilo City, quite frankly, some of our traffic auxiliary forces are a bitter disappointment. Of course, not every one of them are like that -- many of them deserve lots of praises for a job well done. But we cannot deny the fact that there are members of the force who are lazy bums who do nothing but still get paid. Pasaway na ang driver, pasaway pa gid ang iban nga traffic police! They not only make the traffic situation worse, they give such a noble job a bad name. And I'm sure Davao has it's share of bad cops but apparently, their number is insufficient to cause problems.
And most importantly, drivers themselves are very disciplined. When we were on our way to the airport, the taxi we were in had to stop at an intersection because the traffic light was red (y'all know what that means). Take note that this happened at around 3 a.m. There were no other vehicles around but the taxi still didn't budge until the light turned green! Here in Iloilo City (when we still used traffic lights), the lights had barely turned green but cars and jeeps have already raced across the intersection.
Davao City's generally peaceful roads could be attributed to the people's discipline. And it helps a lot if your city government officials are good leaders. Sometimes discipline has to be the product of fear in order for it to materialize. The taxi man said the reason most people in Davao is disciplined, not just on the road but in every aspect of the city, is the fear of being punished. The city government of Davao is seriously implementing all of its ordinances including punishment if one goes outside of the law.
This is not to say that Davao is better than Iloilo. The point here is that apparently, Davao's city government has found an answer to solving most of its major problems. The Iloilo city government, still in search for solutions to its own set of problems could learn from Davao a thing or two about good traffic management.