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Gideon Lasco, the man behind the Pinoy Mountaineer blog, walked the entire stretch of EDSA on Sunday morning along with a dozen members of the Global Shapers Community – Manila Hub. They started from the SM Mall of Asia Globe and walked northbound until they reached the Sky Garden of SM North EDSA. All in all, it took them five hours and 30 minutes.
“Our main goal for the walk was to start a conversation about how we can make Manila a walkable city,” Lasco, who is a doctor by profession, writes on the blog.
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It’s a very informative essay with a lot of observations about our dear old city. Below are just some of them.
1. There is a lack of organized pedestrian infrastructure. According to Joyce Aguirre, a landscape architect who joined the Walkathon, the ideal length of a sidewalk is about 1.5 meters. “Metro Manila’s is a far cry. In at least one section near Guadalupe, only a slim person can comfortably fit,” Lasco notes.
2. Pasay city is very dirty. “It was littered with trash everywhere, and there were many people who consider EDSA not just a place to pass through but a place to live.”
3. Makati is much better. “It was relatively clean, and from Magallanes, the sidewalk was much better, with trees that made the air really much breathable.” It only took the group 30 minutes from Magallanes to Buendia.
4. The bike lanes were kind of futile. Lasco said that these bike lanes “would effectively extinguish the sidewalk as a pedestrian lane, and there were electric posts blocking the path anyway – making it impractical for bikes.”
5. Cubao is chaotic. “Sidewalks coexist with parking areas and vending spaces – almost in violation of the law of physics that says no two things can occupy the same place a the same time.”
You should totally head out to the Pinoy Mountaineer blog and read more.
Photo: Mithunonthe.net
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