EDSA played a major role in our nationhood — a symbol for many Filipinos who saw a direction at last after the Marcos Sr. years. Yet we all know that road led nowhere — some might even say it led us back to where we started.
Today, EDSA is a reminder of our failures as a nation, with a weakness at the core now revealed just like the bumps and cracks on the highway we once glorified.
EDSA means traffic. EDSA means delay, discomfort and dismay. EDSA means an endless trek to the progress we envisioned decades ago. That’s what EDSA represents.
What brings back these memories is the recent announcement by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) that the rehabilitation of EDSA will start “anytime within June,” as reported yesterday. This would yet be another test for our transport-related government agencies to work well together — unless they live to see motorists and commuters suffer even more than they should.
What are the chances we would see a seamless coordination among the DPWH, the Department of Transportation, and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority? This late in time, they are still talking about the need for an information campaign — to let the public know to anticipate more traffic on EDSA, that there will be alternate routes they could take, which expectedly would turn out to be just as congested.
It’s like spreading the discomfort, and we had better be prepared to take it.
And really? We know information can be disseminated with just a few clicks these days, but what does it mean when the agencies concerned are only talking about it mere weeks before the start of the project? The project is delayed enough as it is — originally planned to start in March — and here we are in May, dreading possibly insane traffic in June.
Traffic management, I think anyone who has been on metro roads knows, is a crazy seesaw. The system is crawling with problems, and if one can see the likes of Transport chief Vince Dizon lose his smile and gain more white hair, you can believe the problems are not going away.
Still, we won’t be doing our Filipino culture any favors by whining. One would think we had not been drilled for centuries into long-suffering silence. That blip in the system, that one hiccup in our history where EDSA seemingly gave us a way out, was an aberration, a breather — a chance to imagine and envision change.
It took us decades, but yes, we could be in for another blip, judging from the shock we are still talking about from the last elections, when a new young voice began to be heard.
One hopes that EDSA, by the time the national elections come along, will be smooth and flowing enough for the young voting public to rehabilitate those long-dead ideals once carried by people who were about their age when everything was about a highway of dreams.