WISHFUL TINKERING

A dozen hopes for 2026

- By Kap Maceda Aguila

FIRST OFF, we all deserve hearty congratulations for surviving 2025. It was crazy on so many levels, wasn’t it? Freaky weather, freaky world events, freaky politicians, freaky government contractors. The year was a gift that kept on giving us a variety of surprises - from happy ones to heartache-inducing.

Now that we're ready to close the curtains on the year, it’s time for our customary resolutions for the next one — a 2026 that’s still pristine and unsullied. See if any (or all) these are also on your motoring/mobility wish list.

1. A better EDSA. We were all dreading the originally planned massive (though much needed) rehabilitation of the country’s main road artery that is the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) last year — one that had us on tenterhooks because of the implications to our daily commute, and for two years at that. Well, the government has given us a sort of compromise to minimize the discomfort and inconvenience while getting to tick crucial boxes. As reported by our sister publication The Philippine STAR (through Ghio Ong and Rainier Allan Ronda), Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Secretary Vince Dizon said that, along with a budget slash from P17 billion to P6 billion, fixing EDSA will be done in two phases of four months each. The first one — covering Roxas Boulevard up to Orense Street in Makati — commenced on Christmas Eve (11 p.m., to be exact) and should be done in “April or May next year.” Here’s hoping that when everything’s completed, we don’t have to contend with unexpected, gaping potholes after typhoons or seasonal showers. To the DPWH chief's credit, he acknowledged that people get angry at endless reblocking measures (i.e., an endless revenue stream?), so he knows the value of a onetime, bigtime effort.