Doing Things Half Way

 Sat, 12 Sep 2009

Been a while since I wrote about goings on here. But I can say it's been a fun-filled time. President Martinelli has apparently been all over his people. I haven't seen so much activity out of government employees in years. In fact, part of the fun was an inspection of my company by the ASEP, the National Authority of Public Services. Being a "public service" (Internet) provider, I operate under their oversight. First time in 10 years of operation -- amazing (I'm supposed to be inspected every 2 years or so).

But not just the ASEP has been busy (or kept me busy). I applaud much of what's being done. In some cases, the press has coverage of the details. And immersed in those details (only $DEITY knows why) is President Martinelli. A house of prostitution is raided -- video at 11 -- and there is President Martinelli. Could be he just came over after seeing all the police cars in front of his house (the bordello was next door to the President's residence -- obviously an upscale bordello).

Other institutions have also been very busy. Lots, and I do mean lots of flailing going on. Wish I could say it was all for the best. But that's not the way down here. For example, the government put up a lot of pedestrian bridges. Every day I go down the highway and there are people standing in the median trying to cross the (very) busy highway directly below the pedestrian bridge. The media made a big to-do over some woman that was run over at night by a hit and run driver, ranting at the police, people sobbing and crying for justice, and the entire charade is happening -- below a pedestrian bridge. Yes, there should be justice. And it should be meeted out against the estate of the woman too stupid to use the pedestrian bridge (she was neither pregnant nor handicapped).

But the state is partly to blame. Anyone with any sense knows that if you put up a 6 foot fence 100 meters in each direction below the bridge will be enough to encourage the use of the bridge. But that would require the hospital entrance to be a right turn only leaving the hospital. And one day they tried that experiment too. Again, half way. They forced everyone to turn right. The driver's response was to immediately move into the the left turn lane just 30 feet from the entrance, turn left across the highway, and make a U-turn in an open field and head back toward town. The owners of the field weren't impressed.

Another example is the two lane divided roadway going out to the airport. Lots of streets empty into this road. Only a very few have a way to turn left onto the road into a merge lane -- no, the most congested places leave folks half-way across blocking one lane (and they wonder why there's so many accidents there). One road that tees into the main road they tried to block the opening so no one could cross. Even posting a policeman to give out tickets didn't discourage the left-turners.

Of course my favorite is a brand new bicycle path that parallels this busy four-lane road. It ends exactly where it's most needed, dumping hundreds of bikes into the part of the road just 50 feet before the worst intersection (one of the intersections with no merge lane). You have to wonder if the "engineers" that designed this were deliberately trying to kill people.

Last but not least is the new traffic light in front of the police station. It's been up for over two weeks now. They've tried to turn it on twice for an hour at a time with a dozen or so ATTT (Traffic and Terrestrial Transport Authority) folks stopping people and explaining to them they have to heed the traffic signals. I'd say it needs another month or so for folks to get used to the signal being there, but will take many days of the ATTT folks flagging people down to explain what the red light means.

What really gets me is that all the lessons that haven't been learned here but should have been. Short-sighted is hardly the word, but it will have to do. Even when faced with the obvious, the "engineers" here just can't see the problem, much less the solution. This is likely the same problem that prompted the University of Panama (a University I consider sub-par, and that's supported by its exclusion from any list of top 500+ universities in the world), to complain that 50% of applicants during the past few years couldn't pass the entrance exam! Wow. That's embarrasing to say the least.

And so the flailing continues. I'll have another story up shortly that's very sobering for all government employees. Until then.

David-

Doing Things Half Way

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