THE Department of Public Works and Highways has announced plans to rehabilitate the entire length of EDSA this year.Public Works and Highways Secretary Manuel Bonoan said that 'right now, if you pass through EDSA, you will have a hard time texting on your mobile phone because the ride is too bumpy.'But a bumpy ride is a minor inconvenience, compared to being stuck for hours in the monstrous traffic on the country's longest and busiest highway.The traffic congestion has worsened to the point that the Management Association of the Philippines last year cited it as a reason to declare a state of calamity in Metro Manila.According to the 2023 Traffic Index released by the transportation data company TomTom Traffic, it takes 25 minutes and 30 seconds to travel 10 kilometers on EDSA during rush hours, with over 117 hours lost per year.The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) said the gridlock is costing the economy P1.7 trillion annually.The 23.8-kilometer EDSA, which cuts through six Metro Manila cities, was built to accommodate 300,000 vehicles a day. That capacity has long been topped; an estimated 464,000 vehicles now pass through the highway every day, increasing to 480,000 during the Christmas season.Until 1959, EDSA, named after eminent academician, historian and journalist Epifanio de los Santos, was just a four-lane asphalt road known as Highway 54, built as a north-south road that bypassed the narrow, crowded streets of Manila.Improvements began in earnest a decade later with the completion of the Guadalupe Bridge and the construction of interchanges and flyovers along the highway.By the 1980s, EDSA had become the major artery in Metro Manila's road system. And the artery began to experience clogging.EDSA has since defied numerous decongestion attempts. Measures like a number-coding scheme and limiting the number of provincial buses failed to improve traffic flow.An ambitious decongestion program launched by the Duterte administration involved building roads and bridges that would divert traffic from EDSA and reduce travel time from Cubao in Quezon City to Makati City to an incredible five to six minutes. That target was never hit.The congestion has, in fact, worsened. A vehicle averages 21 kilometers an hour on EDSA, slowing to a crawl of 15 kilometers per hour during the Christmas holidays.Last year, the Department of Transportation signed a three-year, technical cooperation project agreement with JICA for the 'major rehabilitation' of EDSA.The agreement brings in JICA support for road projects like the Public Transport Modernization Program, the EDSA Busway and the EDSA Greenways Project.It involves expanding the road network by building more bypasses, diversion roads, expressways, flyovers, interchanges and underpasses. The strategy is to offer EDSA users with more routes that are faster and where traffic is more tolerable.Several projects started before the agreement and have been completed are also expected to improve traffic flow in the metropolis.Among them are the 18-kilometer Metro Manila Skyway Stage 3, which cuts travel time from Buendia Avenue in Makati to Balintawak in Caloocan from two hours to 15–20 minutes and the 7.7-kilometer (km) NLEx-SLEx Connector Road, which reduces travel time between the two expressways from two hours to only 20 minutes.Expected to come online this year is Phase 1 of the Laguna Lakeshore Road Network Project, a 51-km road from Calamba City to Bicutan in Taguig in Metro Manila's southern corridor.Bonoan said the rehabilitation of EDSA must be carried out 'once and for all.' We wholly agree, but carrying major repair work without creating more traffic buildup presents another challenge.Bonoan admits that the makeover of EDSA had been put off a number of times because the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) does not want to be blamed for the congestion it could create. As it is, several road projects along EDSA are already causing bottlenecks, particularly during rush hours, and the MMDA, which has administrative jurisdiction over the highway, is taking the heat for it.The MMDA, and the Public Works and Transportation departments will have to come up with a fine-tuned plan that will ensure that the upgrading efforts do not add to EDSA's traffic woes.
