Bus ban on EDSA

Violators of the ordinance will be fined P2,000.

Buses coming from the provinces are no longer allowed to ply EDSA during the rush hours starting August 15, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) announced.

Under the proposed scheme, buses coming from the north shall end their route in Cubao, Quezon City while those coming from the south shall end their route in Pasay City.

Valenzuela City Mayor Rex Gatchalian joined MMDA and Land Transportation and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) officials at the inspection of Valenzuela Interim Terminal to assess if it can operate as a station for provincial buses starting August 15.

The policy takes effect during “rush hours” or from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m. from Monday to Friday. Violators will be slapped with a P2,000 fine.

Garcia said the five-hectare terminal in Valenzuela City has yet to comply with the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) requirement, including the installation of waiting sheds, comfort rooms, and walkways, among others, before provincial buses can fully utilize the facility.

Once operational, provincial buses coming from the north can drop off their passengers inside the terminal located on Paso de Blas Road where Metro Manila-bound commuters can transfer to city buses.

Among these are the establishment of designated areas for provincial and city buses; management of queues for jeepneys, buses and UV Express vans that share the terminal; and completion of waiting sheds for passengers.

Nevertheless, the MMDA will still implement on August 15 the ban of provincial buses on EDSA during rush hours.

This means that starting August 15, MMDA personnel will begin apprehending provincial buses on EDSA from 7am to 10am and 6pm to 9pm.

Why EDSA?

The Epifanio de los Santos Avenue is the main thoroughfare in Metro manila passing through six of the capital's 17 local government units. This includes the Santolan and Socorro districts, where the twin military bases of Camp Rafael Crame and Camp Aguinaldo, are located. Since it was the Martial Law, it was also where Marcos' main line of defense lies.

The 24-kilometer long Avenue, however, wasn't always called EDSA. It went through a long of history of changed names:

1) North-South Circumferential Road
Construction of what was intended to be a two-way highway started in the 1930s, during the term of President Manuel L. Quezon, and ended in 1940. The team was led by engineers Florencio Moreno and Osmundo Monsod.

The road started from the North Diversion Road (today the North Luzon Expressway) and ended at the current Magallanes Interchange of the South Luzon Expressway, thus the North-South in its original name.

2) Avenida 19 de Junio
After the independence of the Philippines from the American occupation (1946), the road was renamed Avenida 19 de Junio to commemorate the birthday of Philippine hero Jose Rizal.

3) Highway 54
It was again renamed by American administrators in the 1950s to Highway 54 because of the common misconception that the avenue stretches to 54 kilometers in length. The real measure is actually 30 kilometers less.

4) Epifanio de los Santos Avenue
By virtue of Republic Act 2140 in 1959, the road was renamed to honor Filipino intellectual and historian Epifanio de los Santos. Former Senate President Eulogio Rodriguez Sr. started this movement, and upon his death, Atty. Juan Francisco Sumulong completed the campaign. Besides NHCP, groups that approved of the name change included the Philippine Historical Association, the Philippine Library Association, and the Philippine National Historical Society.

Epifanio de los Santos or "Don Panyong" (1871-1928) was often regarded as the greatest Filipino genius after Rizal. Noted historian Gregorio Zaide described him as a rare genius because of his encyclopedic knowledge. He was a scholar, lawyer, historian, journalist, jurist, philosopher, bibliophile, biographer, philologist, painter, poet, musician, literary critic, politician, librarian, biographer, translator, linguist, researcher, and philanthropist. He wasn't only fluent in Spanish, English, French, and German but also has excellent command in Philippine languages like Ibaloi, Tingian, and Ita.

Despite being one of the best Filipino writers in Spanish and being the first Filipino to become a member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Language, Literature, and History in Madrid, he wrote extensively in Tagalog. He was a member of the Samahan ng mga Mananagalog, which was founded by Felipe Calderon.

He championed Philippine independence through journalism and became the associate editor of the influential revolutionary paper, La Independencia, in 1898. He also co-founded patriotic publications like La Libertad, El Renacimienta, La Democracia, and La Patria.

De los Santos also served as a member of the Malolos Congress. He was the first governor of Nueva Ecija in 1902 and again in 1904. He was then appointed provincial fiscal of Bulacan and Bataan. Interestingly, he wrote an essay "Fraudes electorales y sus remedios" (Electoral fraud and its remedies) for the Philippine assembly in 1907.

Epifanio de los Santos Avenue

Quezon may be disappointed that Edsa did not turn out to be the most beautiful in the country, but it remains the longest—from Caloocan at its northernmost end, passing by Quezon City, Mandaluyong and Makati, to its southernmost end in Pasay.

The story about its name that I first heard in the board of the National Historical Institute three decades ago was that, the government wanted to rename Highway 54 in honor of a Filipino historian. But the most eminent ones at the time, like Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Gregorio Zaide and Horacio de la Costa, were ineligible because they were still alive. With an unwritten rule that streets can only be named after dead people, it became Epifanio de los Santos Avenue.

This is, in fact, fake news, because the real contenders were US General Douglas “I shall return” MacArthur, and the much loved Ramon Magsaysay, who died in a plane crash in 1957. Then there was Jose Rizal, who already had a surplus of streets named after him. Still, the Caballeros de Rizal proposed that Highway 54 be renamed “19 de Junio” to mark the National Hero’s birthday. It could not have been “12 de Junio,” the date of the 1898 declaration of Independence in Kawit, because, at the time, Philippine Independence Day was celebrated on July 4, as in the United States, until Diosdado Macapagal moved it to June 12 in 1962.

Eulogio Rodriguez Jr. was the first to propose Edsa with House Bill 2832, on the grounds that the street passed through the province of Rizal and should honor an illustrious son of the province. Unfortunately, the Rodriguez bill did not prosper and the proponent passed away. Under a new Congress, the initiative was taken up by Nacionalista Party member F. Sumulong and the Liberal Party’s Benedicto Padillo. The Sumulong bill was filed, first supported by the Philippines Historical Committee, the Philippine Historical Association, the Philippine National Historical Society, the Philippine Library Association, the Association of University and College Professors, etc. Other resolutions of support were passed by Quezon City in 1954, Pasay in 1955, and Makati in 1958. Politicians in Caloocan and Mandaluyong could not make up their minds and abstained.

Sumulong’s bill was unanimously approved by both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and was signed into law by President Garcia as Republic Act No. 2140—“changing the name of Highway 54 in the province of Rizal to Epifanio de los Santos Avenue in honor of Don Epifanio de los Santos, A [foremost] Filipino Scholar, Jurist and Historian [of his time]”—on April 7, 1959, birthday of Don Panyong.

It is sad that Epifanio de los Santos is all but unknown to millennials today. He was a man described by contemporaries as the most learned man of his time, the best guitar player of his time, and the most eminent collector, writer, critic, historian and director of the National Library of his time.