From Traffic to trees.

Or is it from trees to traffic?

All this talk about trees obstructing traffic and killing trees in the name of traffic is bull. I have yet to think of so stupid a topic to debate upon than the above. When do we grow up? When do we start to discern between barking up the wrong tree and becoming the solution to instead of being part of the problem?

The original problem was traffic. It’s been that since Edsa reduced Escolta as mere historical footnote insofar as hub of life – both high and low – is concerned. It’s been that since the Sixties’ Beatle mania gave way, albeit temporarily, to the Eight’s Basuramania. Basuramania being basura (garbage) of any king hurled anywhere for all the world to care.

Trash thrown into brooks, river, and lakes.

Trash thrown into alleys streets and highways.

Trash thrown into the floor of Congress, hallway of Malacañang, consciousness of a public long enslaved by a political system not truly responsive to the needs of the governed.

But to go back where I started.

Traffic or trees? Trees of traffic?

Of course, traffic. We’ve been bugged long enough by traffic that it’s about time we bug this malady out of our lives. A bug named Bayani Fernando has been bugging us for quite sometime now about the need to address the bugger of a bug that is traffic. In so doing, Bayani has become, invariably, the butt of jokes and the bug who refuses to budge.

Bayani, or BF to many, has become the butt of jokes because of this jokes about how to go about licking traffic in the Big City. Some of them have floored me, others had me doubling up in laughter.

For example, his decision to remove many left-turns and virtually all traffic lights that cross on Edsa. That was a big joke because it did not reconcile with other bottlenecks plaguing Edsa like the giant bus stations stationed along Edsa. It was a band-aid solution to a gaping wound and thus, ineffective – both from the very start and in the long run.

That floored me.

Next, the trees.

BF wanted them either cut down or balled and replanted to “where they belong, which is the parks.” He said trees, particularly those at Ateneo/Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City, blocking traffic.

I heard BF say that before – trees blocking traffic. In fact, he’s done already what he’s been threatening us with again. Last year, he cut a tree at Edsa near Nepa Q, and next boasted his crime would pay. Meaning traffic would improve at Edsa. If it did, I’d be either a nut or blind. I have yet to see Edsa, particularly that stretch where that tree used to “look at God all day.” That tree was felled because it blocked human traffic?

My eye.

The tree being a traffic blocker is yet the most sickening joke from BF. It smacks of the most twisted logic yet since Imeda Marcos gave birth to the MMDA.

Now if a tree is right there in the middle of a street – Edsa or not Edsa – then, sure it blocks traffic. How can a tree that towers from an island that separates a two-way street block traffic?

If you say yes, either you are cross-eyed or punch-drunk. No offense meant to either Jack Egan or Miniong Alvarez (bless their souls).

I repeat, it’s not the trees, BF, it’s some other sores that are not God-made (only God can make a tree, remember?) but rather, man-made, that cause traffic jams on Edsa.

Edsa has lots of bottlenecks but never the trees. As I said, the most effective traffic blockers there are the bus stations from the corner of Kamuning up to Aurora Boulevard, and the those again stationed near Baclaran.

Also, include the bus stops. Golly, these numerous stops are mostly corruption stops for your own men than stops for buses. If your own men would only enforce the law to the hilt, maybe you’d spare the trees from your wrath.

As a parting shot, trees, including those both at Katipunan Avenue and Sierra Madre, also have feelings like you. Do you know that if you paint the trunk of a tree white, the tree would fell poisoned and I would shed tears in the form of sap? And that’s only with white, the color of peace. What more if you paint I red (war color), much less cut of uproot it and relocate that much, what more with trees that are as defenseless as those in “Schindler’s List” in Nazi camps?

Anyway, it’s not the trees that cause traffic at Katipunan, BF. It’s still man ang machine. Now, if your men would only go about their job of instilling order on man and machine and not follow your murderous order to cut or uproot those trees there, that part of the Big City would be as traffic-free as the Mojave desert.
Ok, to get back to another question: Does BF mean Bayani Fernando?

Not to me. To me, BF, for as long as the gut insists on going against God’s will on trees, mean Big Farce. At least that sounds better than Big Fa--.