Better road planning is urgently needed in Mérida in the face of urban growth

Share news on twitterShare news on facebookShare news on whatsappShare news on Telegram
It is not news that the city of Mérida and some municipalities in the interior of the state are experiencing great development, in terms of the size of the city, but with this increase it seems that they do not take into account the importance of the correct planning of roads, leaving aside road engineering that should be fundamental in the development of streets and the design of cities.

In an interview with road engineer René Flores Ayora, he mentioned and stressed the primary importance of new developments or constructions of shopping centers, supermarkets and other places of social and commercial coexistence, to carry out the necessary road impact studies, which will be in charge of setting the guidelines to mitigate the problems that such construction could generate, so that the roads are optimized.

He also mentioned that it is important for the authorities to resume the use of the manuals that are already established, such as the manual of signs and geometric design, in order to design safe roads for all those who use them.

“We need to build safe roads, which we call safe, so that a person can travel and crash due to carelessness, but since it is a safe intersection, the person does not die in that crash, we call that safe intersections, that is why it is important to design these avenues in a safe manner according to traffic engineering, which is very overlooked,” said the specialist.

In addition, he emphasized that the authorities have overlooked road engineers, since many times traffic engineering is not applied in road design, which is often left to other professionals such as engineers, architects or urban planners without specialization in this subject.

When delving deeper into the subject, the use of traffic lights in the city came to light, which, according to Flores Ayora, should be placed according to studies carried out at intersections, as well as pedestrian traffic lights, which in some parts of the city seem to be placed randomly.

“We see that the time given to pedestrians at the traffic light is relatively short, for example, if there is a 12-meter avenue, the traffic light only gives you 8 seconds of green, you will not be able to cross the avenue in those 8 seconds, so those intersections must be fixed, the necessary studies must be carried out and based on that, the times of pedestrian and vehicular traffic lights are now designed,” he stressed.

Source: sipse