Do it at night

WHAT if, for all the “tiis-tiis,” patience, cooperation, and patriotism, the problem of EDSAsperat-ing traffic will not go away?

With all the police and media attention on EDSA, the “professional” drivers who know as much about traffic rules as when the earthquake will strike are behaving like they’re not part of the problem only because EDSA is not their route. The jokers who have a license but not the brains to drive think that if they don’t use EDSA they don’t have to worry about learning and following the rules.

And yet before Christmas comes along there’ll be 75,000 more cars on the road, not counting trucks, motorcycles, tricycles, second-hand clunkers, and other contraptions. Where to put them??

Roads are for sharing, but not good manners. One person minding his manners doesn’t mean the other guy will do the same. Look at DLSU alumnus Education Secretary Luistro, a man of manners, and look at the La Salle drivers who park and double-park on Ortigas and its sidewalks. Look at DPWH’s contractors. We let them occupy half a road and what do they give us? Traffic jams! Five men working on a five-block stretch for eight hours! In other countries, the work is 24 hours day and night. Our workers are paid to work for a third of the day. They’re not paid to work beyond 5 p.m. and not on holidays, not at night when they can toil away more comfortably with traffic lightening up and the air cooling.

The eight-hour labor law explains why our roadworks are always delayed, always. What’s wrong with working at night? The 24/7 “solution” won’t cost a cent, requires no infra or HPG presence, no exasperation in the matter of, say, having to acquire another car with the odd-even scheme possibly looming just around the traffic-choked corner.