EDSA, MMDA, stupid ideas

EDSA was never designed to be a one-way avenue, and the MRT tracks in the middle of EDSA prevent it from being feasibly converted into a one-way avenue.

It’s unsettling to learn that ex-mutineer Danilo Lim’s Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) entertains absurd solutions to solve the traffic congestion problem along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA).

First, the MMDA wanted to increase the number of lanes along EDSA by reducing the width of each of the four existing lanes and dividing up the same area into five lanes. That would have increased the number of lanes, but the reduced space in each of the five new lanes will force vehicles to travel even more slowly to avoid colliding with other vehicles. That translates to a slower traffic along EDSA. Fortunately, that stupid idea was abandoned.

Next, the MMDA planned an elevated sidewalk along EDSA, particularly along its southbound lane segment from Cubao to Ortigas Avenue, complete with vertical gardens and a roof. The MMDA simply assumed that if people need to reach long distances and traffic along EDSA is snarled, then they can just walk along the elevated sidewalk and enjoy the garden and the shade.

Good heavens! Walk from Cubao to Ortigas? That’s a distance of more than five kilometers! Not everybody can walk that distance even in the shade. The posts which will support the elevated sidewalk will have to take up sidewalk space downstairs, thus forcing pedestrians to walk on the road and block vehicular traffic.

It’s easy for the MMDA to suggest that people should walk from Cubao to Ortigas and vice versa when traffic along EDSA in Quezon City is heavy. Lim and his top minions in the MMDA use government-paid luxury vehicles to bring them wherever they want to go.

After that, the MMDA entertained a suggestion that vehicles using EDSA should be regulated on the basis of their brand. This hairbrained plan suggested banning Toyotas on Mondays, Mitsubishis on Tuesdays, Hondas on Wednesdays, and so on. That will put Toyota owners at a marked disadvantage since Toyota has the most units on the road. Vehicles other than Toyotas will have EDSA to themselves on at least one day of the week.

Then the MMDA publicized an absurd suggestion from a group of engineers that EDSA and Circumferential Road 5 (C-5) be made one-way avenues, with EDSA headed south and C-5 going north.

Commuters throughout the metropolis ridiculed this proposal ridiculous. They pointed out that although it will increase the speed of vehicles using EDSA and C-5, it will add to the distance a commuter has to travel either going to or coming from anywhere along either EDSA or C-5. It’s a basic postulate in geometry that the shortest distance from one point to another is the straight line, and not a round-about route.

EDSA was never designed to be a one-way avenue, and the MRT tracks in the middle of EDSA prevent it from being feasibly converted into a one-way avenue. How will vehicles on one-half of a one-way EDSA move to the other half considering that the walls of the MRT constitute a formidable concrete barrier through most of this avenue? Also, moving from one-half of a one-way EDSA to the other half cannot be done at intersections because it will unduly impede the traffic flow along the intersecting roadway.

In a one-way EDSA, the existing left-turning ramp at the EDSA-Ortigas Avenue intersection headed for San Juan will have to be converted to an EDSA-Makati bound ramp for vehicles coming from San Juan City via Ortigas Avenue. That means the west-bound lane of Ortigas Avenue near the intersection at EDSA will be reduced to a narrow two-lane bottleneck.

As for a one-way C-5, suffice it to say that vehicles headed toward the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX) from Pateros will have to take the long route to EDSA. The vehicles may move faster, but more time is consumed on the round because of the longer route.

Vehicles from Bonifacio Global City also headed for the SLEX will suffer the same fate.

If the government pushes through with a train system right in the middle of C-5, the same problem in EDSA gets duplicated.

Like his friend Nicanor Faeldon of the Bureau of Corrections, the MMDA’s Lim should do President Rodrigo Duterte a favor and resign.