The EDSA problem

Time was when Highway 54 was a two-lane road lined with acacia trees craning to see who was the rare interloper driving up or down the stretch from the Bonifacio Monument in Caloocan to Taft Avenue in Pasay City, exiting some places in between.

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That was in the 1950s, when greater Manila was rising from the destruction and setbacks of World War II and the Japanese occupation.

Construction of what was then called the North and South Circumferential Road began in 1939 under Commonwealth President Manuel L. Quezon, who had planned a new capital city, which became Quezon City. Highway 54 was C-4, meant to interconnect Quezon City, Manila, and Pasay. After World War II and the independence of the Philippines from the United States in 1946, it became known as Avenida 19 de Junio (June 19 Avenue), after the birth date of national hero José Rizal (bworldonline.​com, May 25, 2018). In 1959, the formal name was changed to Epifanio de los Santos Ave., after the Rizal scholar, historian, and jurist.

Landscape architect, environmental planner, and urban designer Paulo Alcazaren related his own experience of the history of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, still stubbornly called Highway 54 through the 1960s, and later to be called by its acronym "EDSA" by the 1970s in his column in The Philippine Star (Feb. 24, 2024): "Highway 54 started as a two-lane asphalt road with large swathes of cogon field on either side of it. It widened to four lanes by the mid-1950s, but had no lighting and very little development along it except for the government's housing 'Projects,' the private Philamlife Homes, as well as some commercial development at the highway's two main "crossings" at Cubao in Quezon City and at Shaw Boulevard.

The Shaw intersection was (and is still known) as "crossing";

"...We crossed Highway 54 to get to school or to old Manila, where we would visit my grandfather or watch movies downtown. In the early 1960s, I remember the lonely stretch of the highway when I accompanied my father, a doctor, to a clinic for employees at the old ABS-CBN compound. It was a shack with one lone television tower;