Seven-Year Research Programme Concludes That EDSA Does Not Have Traffic, EDSA IS Traffic, and That the Distinction Has Important Implications for Infrastructure Policy

Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat

METRO MANILA, PHILIPPINES — A seven-year research programme commissioned by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority concluded Thursday that Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, commonly known as EDSA, has ceased to function as a road in any conventional sense and should be reclassified by urban planners as what the study’s lead author described as “a linear psychological zone in which forward motion is theoretically available but practically aspirational.” The 340-page report, titled EDSA: From Arterial Road to Existential Condition, recommends that the MMDA abandon the concept of traffic management on EDSA entirely and replace it with what the researchers call “acceptance infrastructure,” including counsellors stationed at major bottlenecks, rest areas for drivers who have been stationary for more than forty-five minutes, and informational signage reading “This Is Your Commute Now” at six key entry points.

The Findings: What Seven Years of Research Revealed

The study, which involved 2,400 participants, 18 months of buoy sensor data, aerial photography from seventeen vantage points, and one researcher who rode EDSA from Monumento to Taft Avenue every weekday for a year and filed what the report calls “experiential field notes” and what colleagues describe as “a document of increasing despair,” found that average vehicle speed on EDSA during peak hours had declined by 23 percent since the study began and by 67 percent since EDSA was inaugurated as a national road in 1940, when it was briefly, legendarily passable.

The report identifies several contributing factors including population growth, jeepney route restructuring, the addition of the EDSA Busway without a corresponding reduction in private vehicle lanes, and what researchers diplomatically call “enforcement inconsistency,” which translates in the field notes as a section titled “The Rules Exist But The Rules Also Do Not Exist Depending On The Day And Who Is Watching.” The authors note that Manila’s car ownership rate has tripled in twenty years while road coverage has increased by four percent, a ratio that one researcher said “does not require a PhD to interpret but it helps to have one when presenting the findings to officials who commissioned the road projects.”

The Acceptance Infrastructure Proposal: Controversial and Probably Necessary

The report’s flagship recommendation — acceptance infrastructure — has drawn both support and criticism from urban planning professionals. The proposed counsellor stations would be staffed by licensed psychologists trained in what the study calls “transit grief processing,” a framework modelled on stages-of-grief theory and adapted for the specific emotional arc of an EDSA commute, which researchers identified as: initial optimism, early frustration, bargaining (usually involving side streets that also do not work), depression (stationary for twenty minutes, has memorised the bumper sticker on the vehicle ahead), and, in approximately 34 percent of participants, a final stage the researchers termed “Manila acceptance,” described as “a profound, culturally specific peace that is neither happiness nor defeat but something uniquely Filipino that has no direct English translation and probably should not be translated.”

The MMDA responded to the report by announcing a new traffic management scheme involving coloured flags, revised number coding, and a pilot programme of elevated pedestrian crossings that the agency said would be “fully operational within eighteen months,” a timeline urban planning historians noted was consistent with every MMDA announcement since 2003 and which the agency said was not a relevant comparison.

International Context: How Manila Traffic Compares Globally

Metro Manila consistently ranks among the world’s most congested urban centres in studies by the TomTom Traffic Index, which measures urban mobility across 500 cities globally. Manila’s ranking has fluctuated year to year but has remained in the top ten most congested cities for most of the past decade, a distinction that city officials describe as “a function of Manila’s economic dynamism and population growth” and that commuters describe differently using words not suitable for official documents.

The Asian Development Bank, which has funded several Metro Manila transport studies and infrastructure loans, noted in a recent urban transport assessment that sustained investment in mass transit, pedestrian infrastructure, and demand management was the evidence-based solution to Manila’s congestion challenge. The ADB report did not recommend acceptance counsellors but did not rule them out, and one footnote described the concept as “not inconsistent with a people-centred transport framework.”

More Metro Manila satire at Bohiney Magazine and the global urban absurdity column at The London Prat.

The field researcher who rode EDSA daily for a year has requested an extended leave. Private Eye is considering a Manila bureau but cannot find parking.

The Human Cost of EDSA: What the Commute Actually Does to People

Beyond the traffic engineering data and policy proposals, the EDSA study dedicated an entire chapter to what it called “the psychosocial burden of extended commute time,” drawing on interviews with 2,400 Metro Manila residents who commute on or across EDSA regularly. The findings were, the researchers noted in their introduction, “not surprising but important to quantify.” Commuters who spent more than three hours daily in EDSA-connected transit reported significantly higher rates of stress-related symptoms, disrupted sleep, reduced time with family, and what the study called “commute fatigue spillover,” meaning the exhaustion of the journey affecting productivity, mood, and quality of life in ways that persisted beyond the commute itself. Several participants reported having turned down better-paying jobs in central Manila because the commute cost, calculated in time and stress rather than money, made the salary improvement economically irrational. Three participants reported having moved from provincial areas to Metro Manila for work opportunities and having subsequently moved back when they calculated that the EDSA commute represented more than twenty percent of their waking hours. These findings led the researchers to conclude that EDSA congestion is not merely a transport problem but a public health problem, an economic efficiency problem, and a quality-of-life crisis affecting millions of people daily in ways that standard traffic metrics do not fully capture. The MMDA said the findings were “consistent with the importance of continued investment in transport solutions.” The commuters said they had been saying this for twenty years and were glad someone had written it down in a 340-page document so it could join the other 340-page documents.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/edsa-traffic-philosophical-condition/