Some 20 years ago, it took two hours to get from Cagayan de Oro City to Iligan City. Then the roads were improved, the flow of transportation got better and travel time was down to a respectable 45 minutes. Lately, it’s back to the historic two hours. The reason is this—checkpoints.

There are police and military checkpoints. In other areas, there might even be MILF checkpoints. Allah forbid if travelers have to go through an Abu Sayyaf checkpoint. And there are the Comelec checkpoints still standing three months after the elections. Maybe they are there for the October barangay elections. Talk about being prepared. Still others are the barriers in school zones which are regularly located along the national highways to protect crossing children. As a result, commerce is affected and costs in terms of time and resources are higher.

A strange and recurring scene is the presence of basins (palanggana in the vernacular) atop the unmanned checkpoint signs. To trendy urbanites, this is not a native ritual for safety or peace. It is rather a contribution from the passing vehicles whether for a share of their daily catch of fish or a few chumps of veggies. If the cargo is big like a load of pigs, you don’t drop in a piglet but a bill or two of small denomination. Living standards are lower after all compared to the traffic enforcers plying EDSA. If you refuse, your truck might be stopped and death certificates asked of the pigs from a licensed slaughterhouse. Well, if the pigs are still alive, you better produce the birth certificates!

Call it what you like—direct taxation, indirect taxation, charity or unsavory terms. The reality is out there, no one cares about imperial Manila. Sure, the levers of power and spigots of money have to go through Manila, the symptom on the ground are otherwise.

Going back to EDSA, I dare say that unless and until we get to solve the daily traffic situation along our premiere highway, let’s not even utter the words “national progress.” EDSA has a totally different set of checkpoints you may quickly agree. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court earlier this week ruled that the Metro Manila Development Authority has no authority to remove the hundreds of bus terminals that dot and clog our arteries. Chairman Bayani Fernando has the right idea and good motivation to undertake the commonsensical approach of hubs and centralized terminals at each end of EDSA to rationalize the bullying buses. This makes enforcement a lot easier and simpler.

Now it is time for the local governments to act and for Congress to give the required powers for us to once and for all clear EDSA of obstructions of the worse kind—the buses that have no regard for public safety, save a few respectable companies, all invoking the right to make a living in the short term while ignoring the welfare of the whole national capital region in the medium period and muting the requisites for a developed country in the long view.

Under Chairman BF’s watch, we have experienced better traffic condition. Travel time is much faster. Do we get to lift the color-coding scheme this year to mean our graduation from chronic and paralyzing jams? Alas, the danger of backsliding is here with the increasing two wheeled daredevils hogging the yellow lanes and even the express ones. Motorbikes ply EDSA as if it were a feeder road, as if there is no tomorrow, oblivious of the clear and present danger.

Shall we discuss the tri-sikads, the kalesas, the FXs and the mighty invincible all-purpose pedestrians who snub overpasses and defy destiny? In many ways and none, EDSA from Monumento to the Mall of Asia is like the drive from Cagayan de Oro City to Iligan City. How ironic for Bonifacio to stand at one end of our country’s founding highway and for our Philippine-centric globe at the other end to signify our country’s aspiration?