MEDIUM RARE 

Traffic! EDSA! EDSA, trapik! Can one exist without the other, at this time of year?

One day last week we were to meet for dinner in Greenhills. It was 5:45 p.m., and EDSA was the way – the shortest distance between two points is a straight line – but it was the long way. After what seemed like half of an eternity, we took the first U-turn and came straight home instead, forget Greenhills.

On another day, I was on Quezon Ave.-España-Quiapo going to Manila Hotel, and I made it in 50 minutes from Diliman. It was 11:30 a.m.

The lesson is that it makes a difference what time you’re on the road, EDSA or elsewhere.

Still, EDSA is EDSA. After a group lunch some days ago, I advised everyone, “Let’s not schedule any meet-to-eat sessions until after Dec. 30, okay?” A deafening, embarrassing silence was the answer to my question.

EDSA was once known as Highway 54, a name given by the Americans for reasons unexplained.  When did the name change happen, and why? All we know is that according to “The Kahimyang Project,” Epifanio de los Santos was a Filipino intellectual who traveled far and wide in search of rare documents on the Philippines. He was a nationalist, scholar, lawyer, researcher, musician, poet, painter, researcher, archivist, among other things. For all that, he’s not national-hero material, and I doubt if high school students are curious about those two names, Paniong’s and the highway’s.

On a good day EDSA supposedly could carry a load of 250,000 vehicles. But like the human population, the figures have ballooned: like it or not, 450,000 vehicles day and night. The fact that motorists prefer to take a chance on EDSA says something about the condition of other roads less traveled. Some years ago, “Mabuhay Lanes” in what used to be purely residential neighborhoods were appropriated for sharing with anything that moves on two or more wheels, never mind the noise and pollution in their wake.

Only Senator Robinhood Padilla has boldly envisioned an out-of-the-box solution. Cable cars. Which would make any neighborhood look like a vacation playground, a mode of transportation that could, in addition, bring down the amount of pollutants in the air. Dare we try?