Quote Originally Posted by dr. d View Post
the flashing green light comes only during the last five seconds.
the countdown timer shows the entire 60-90 seconds.
some intersections are such wide swatches of real estate, it takes over 10 seconds of slow traffic, to cross them.
and because it's an intersection, one does not know just how congested the street they are turning into, is.
the complete countdown timer is superior, really.

and i also noticed, in some intersections, the countdown timer, active in the daytime, disappears at night.
someone should tell these folks, "hindi napapagod ang electronics".
Well don't get mad at me... I have nothing to do with it.

I, too, prefer the timer. Then again, there were situations when they were not dependable. There has been a number of cases wherein a motorist was about a few dozen meters away from the intersection with ample time on the display to clear it, when suddenly it turned yellow and red as he was crossing it. Now, I'm only speculating whether or not somebody was actually touching the manual switches of the traffic lights... maybe in response to the changing traffic patterns. That abrupt traffic light change due to having an expectation that the green light will be on for another X seconds, only to be revoked at the least opportune time, is I think what they're planning to avoid. Maybe they're turning on the vehicle detector to control the traffic light interval in real time.... pag tukod na, it will stop the traffic behind. And without a timer, wala nang guessing game kung yung 20 seconds na naka-display is trustworthy or not. Again, just guessing.