ALMOST always, every new thing meets resistance. Even the littlest of things, I tell you. That’s because by nature, we hate to see our comfort zones getting disturbed. Every habit is the hardest to obliterate—thus, the saying, “habits die hard.” Bruce Willis knows this so well.
Take the motorcycle rider. You exclude him from traffic-prone Edsa and he’ll immediately raise hell.
“But I also pay taxes like the car owner,” he’d argue. “Why throw me out of Edsa? That’s outright discrimination. Unconstitutional even.”
But actually, the bike rider isn’t being eased out of Edsa. He’s is just being limited to a specific lane in the Metro’s main artery for his own safety against vehicles with four wheels up.
As we all know, a motorcycle suffers instant spill when it gets hit by any vehicle. Now, if the motorcycle itself bumps a vehicle, it falls just the same. Accident. In either case, the bike rider, his passenger/s, are hurt. Worst, at times, a life is lost.
In short, it is safety concerns chiefly for the motorcycle rider that’s paramount in our officials’ minds when new rules and regulations are being imposed on the road.
Now let’s go to the government plan of phasing out the jeepneys of old and in their place would be electric, air-conditioned conveyances easily deemed as world-class.
I say the forward-looking tribe welcomes the move but not those so-called change-resisters, who, oddly enough, outnumber the meek and the quiet (are they the silent majority, though?).
The protesters’ main gripe is that the new e-jeepney is too expensive. No question there. But isn’t the government willing to help finance the scheme in that applicants to the loan system are to be financially assisted with dispatch?
Change, indeed, is the hardest to achieve because the people themselves required to change their views, attitudes and ways are adamant—at times not recognizing, not listening, the positive effects of a new order of things.
And what is this new Edsa approach wherein two-passenger and up vehicles are put in the innermost lane and a car with just the driver aboard must limit itself in the middle lanes together with motorcycles?
I wrote this a day ahead of the planned dry-run of the new scheme beginning on Monday. I pray it went well—with no-contact apprehensions and corresponding fines imposed put on hold.
I tend to support this brand-new program simply because it does not only encourage car-pooling but add up as well to the disciplinary platform that we’ve been espousing for the longest time.
Car-pool—the practice of neighbors/friends sharing their respective cars during a week while going to their office and back—will greatly reduce vehicle volume at Edsa, thus contributing to a relatively smooth flow in the country’s chief thoroughfare.
It’s being practiced in the United States and many other places in the world for the longest time. About time we adopted it, too.
What do you think?
TPLEx to Pozorrubio
THE Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway (TPLEx) is now up to Pozorrubio, Pangasinan, from the Binalonan exit, all the more cutting travel time from Manila to Baguio City by nearly two-and-a-half hours.
I just passed by it [superbly done, as usual] on my way to Baguio from Quezon City [three-and-a-half hours travel time] to resume my duties as Rulesman [with Jake P. Ayson] in the 68th Department of Tourism (DOT)-Fil-Am Golf Invitational backed by San Miguel Corp. at Baguio’s Camp John Hay and Baguio Country Club.
Soon, TPLEx would have its penultimate exit in Sison, Pangasinan, and, finally, in Rosario, La Union, as “The End.” From Pozorrubio to Rosario is not even 25 kilometers long. Once this stretch is completed, that’d make for a faster trip to Baguio—Rosario to Baguio being a mere 33-km distance.
If you still don’t know it, Balintawak to Baguio is not even 250 km—it’s 233 km to be exact. Traveling that distance in America’s freeways, it’d take you a mere two hours and below to cover by car.
Under SMC’s wings—TPLEx being one of its state-of-the-art projects—it won’t be long when all of Luzon’s road-expressway networks can compare with the world’s best [it also operates South Luzon Expressway].
That’ll be the day.
PEE STOP It is practically 10 days from today before Christmas, the happiest, most beloved day in the Christian world—specifically to the Roman Catholic faithful. Why? Because it is the most famous feast in almost all of humanity, December 25 being—as if you didn’t know—the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us start “making a list” but, make it foremost, please, is to jot down the people who you would show, grant genuine forgiveness for whatever bad things they’d done to you. Forgiving is the essence of love in Christmas for, have we forgotten that Jesus Christ himself forgave his own killers before he breathed his last? “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they’re doing…” Jesus is God our hero for all eternity…To all that sent me invites to their Christmas parties, among them Mitsubishi, Honda, Hyundai, Isuzu, Kia and BMW, thank you very much. My yearly commitment puts me here in Baguio as rulesman again up to December 16 in the DOT-Fil-Am Golf Invitational. But, in spirit, I was with you anew every step of the way, fellas. My deepest gratitude, as always, for remembering.