Posted on Tuesday, December 17, 2002

‘Smart’ traffic lights 
not living up to their name

By Jena T. Balaoro, Reporter

First of two parts

EDSA is Metro Manila’s busiest highway. Over 156,000 of the 1.3 million vehicles in Metro Manila use it everyday — often moving at a crawl, no faster than 15 kph.  That’s about the jogging speed of an average adult man.

The EDSA situation is typical of the overall traffic picture in Metro Manila, which is officially the National Capital Region.  Heavy traffic is one of the scourges of its 12 million-plus residents.

Government has tried several schemes to clear notoriously clogged up intersections and speed up traffic flow.  None of them has been sa­tisfactory.

In 1995, the Department of Public Works and Highways thought it found the solution in the Sydney Coordinated Adoptive Traffic System (SCATS).  Costing $702.27 million, proponents dubbed it SMART for being supposedly a fully automated traffic light system.  But critics soon described it as the dumbest project commissioned by the DPWH and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority.

The SMART system relies on computers and underground road sensors to detect and give traffic signals adjusted to the volume of vehicles passing through 421 of the metropolis’ 450 intersections.

The sensors were supposed to “know” which side to give the “go” signal to. Until today, the SMART’s  intersection traffic lights have never achieved perfect synchronization. The Traffic Engineering Center blames the failure on the delayed and protracted implementation of SCATS.

But in 1997, a congressional committee investigation heard then DPWH Secretary Gregorio Vigilar blame the differences between the old traffic system and the SMART system for the failure of the project.

The installation of the SMART system was originally scheduled for completion in 2000. It is still only partially installed.

TEC Chief Godofredo Galano says the investigation by the House Committee on Good Government, Committee on Public Works and the Committee on Transportation in 1997 caused the delay.

Suspicions of overpricing and warnings he got that the SCAT system would not work here prompted then Quezon City 2nd District Rep. Dante Liban to call for a probe on the project five years ago.  Liban now heads the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority.

“I remember that we received complaints that the Smart traffic light project of the TEC was not suitable with the present infrastructure of Metro Manila. The price of the project was also a major concern,” Liban told The Times.

Galano, however, insists that objections to the SMART/SCATS system come from certain people it was driving out of business.

“I don’t want to raise these charges again because maraming nasaktan nuong palitan ‘yung old system sa new system (many people got hurt when the new system replaced the old), ” he explained.  He refused to elaborate on this allegation.

It was Victor Roxas, Galano’s former assistant at TEC who is said to hold a grudge against his former boss, who brought SMART/SCATS to then Congressman Liban’s attention.

The DPWH and the Australian government sealed the contract for SMART/SCATS in December 1995.   But in 1993,  TEC’s Japanese consultants had recommended an upgrade for the existing Metro Manila traffic system. The recom­mendation, which called for an overhaul, would have cost the government P943.72 million.

Spare parts for the repair of the old system were no longer available, so new types of controllers needed to be installed the Japanese consul­tants, Fukuyama, told the DPWH in 1994.

The DPWH officials therefore decided against repairing the old system and using what they thought was relatively outdated Japanese technology.

The DPWH actually received four other proposals.  There was the French’s Prodyn, whose suppliers would have been Garbarini and BCEOM.  Quicknet from the USA was being offered by Abratique.  The British were presenting the SCOOT system.  And the Australians had their SCATS, represented by AWA, Ltd.

Prodyn and Quicknet were disqualified because they didn’t have enough international users, unlike Australia’s SCATS and the UK’s Split Cycle Offset Optimize Traffic Control System (SCOOT), which were successful in many types of traffic situations around the world.

Vigilar said SCATS and SCOOT initially appeared appropriate for Manila traffic.

The DPWH finally chose SCATS because it was cheaper and, according to an initial study, would be as effective here in Metro Manila as it had been in Cebu City.

Vigilar even succeeded in negotiating for a 12-percent discount, bringing down the cost from the initial contract value of $22.950 million or P587.7 million to P525 million. Govern­ment also won concessions for $1.25-million worth of free equipment from AWA. But even with the concessions, govern­ment still has to pay a total of $702.27 million for nine years, inclusive of the 3.4-percent annual interest.

The state-of-the-art SMART has not eased Manila traffic.

But the country is bound to pay the full contract amount to AWA Ltd. The agreement reached was for government to make semi-annual payments of the principal beginning June 1995 until December 2012. This is on top of miscellaneous fees: a finance fee of $1,236,816; an establishment fee, $68.850; and a commitment fee, $56,513.

The system is under warranty until 2004 — only a year after it is completely installed next year.

With all that money poured into the project, what the authorities find it unacceptable is that SCATS is not working.

MMDA Chairman Bayani Fernando describes it as obsolete. He says the project has taken such a long time to complete that Manila’s requirements have changed since SMART/SCATS was first discussed.

“There must be a better system now. The computer programs and communication lines being used have problems. I believe the connection requirements of the system to the commu­nication lines is not compatible with the old lines,” Fernando pointed out. “The interfacing was not very good,”

But Galano insisted that SCATS could not have become obsolete in such a short period, noting that it is one of the widely used systems in Asia, Europe and the United States.

He said SCATS is actually the latest technology for traffic management.

“The system has always been upgraded. Almost every year or more often, AWA Ltd. Has been improving the system because it has the support of the Australian government.  They have research and development funds to further improve the system,” Galano explains.

An MMDA engineer tells us up to four problem reports out of 10 that TEC receives daily involve communication problems.

Galano acknowledges that SMART suffered communication line glitches in the early stages of implementation.

There was “bad interfacing” after TEC converted communication lines from digital to analog transmission when it switched from the government telecom system (GTS) to the technology used by the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co.

But it’s a minor problem and easily remedied with the installation of multiplexers, Galano says.

The multiplexers provide high-speed communication transmis­sions, so that only one computer is necessary to control eight intersec­tions. The old system’s ratio is one computer per intersection.

“Communication lines is not an issue in the system because the major element of the system are the computers. We already solved the communication problems and I don’t think it’s fair to raise it again,” Galano said.

Galano said even Singapore used converters for the operation of their traffic signal system.

Using multiplexers might have solved the glitch, but not the budgetary problems.

TEC had a P2,000 monthly budget for the use of PLDT lines, but using the telephone firm’s multiplexers jacked up the cost to P6,000.

Insiders say that government now owes PLDT P10.5 million in outstanding bills from September 2001 to October this year.

PLDT has threatened to discontinue service if the outstanding bills are not paid. The TEC’s reply was to acquire its own multiplexers.

Conclusion