This is the tale of two cities I drive through almost every day:  Marikina and Quezon City.  These two cities have a common border somewhere behind Ateneo de Manila, in the Loyola Grand Villas area.  Yet the driving experience cannot be more different.

Marikina was not even a city until 1992.  Before then it was just a municipality, famous for its craftsmanship in shoemaking.  Indeed, you will find several giant wooden shoes garnished with lights floating on the Marikina river.  They symbolize what Marikina aspires to be: a modern manufacturing and residential center with a clean and healthy environment.  The banks of the river itself are ablaze with light, a jogging path marked out along its banks.  And so are its streets well lit, with street names clearly indicated-in reflective paint, no less.  Clear, thoughtful management is evident here-of course street signs need to be reflective; otherwise, they'd be useless half the time, and in the half that's more dangerous, too. 

New roads have been opened: the access road to Loyola Grand Villas going out to Balara, the road through San Mateo leading to the Batasang Pambansa area.  One road will soon be opened linking the main Marikina road of A.Bonifacio / Sumulong Highway to C-5.  Floods still persist but have been greatly reduced, and new pipes draining water from the roads to the rivers are being put into place.

Meanwhile, what does Quezon City give us drivers?  How about a huge traffic jam on the intersection of C-3-A.Bonifacio, simply because the traffic lights are off?  The jam stretches in all four directions to the North Expressway tollbooth, Rizal Avenue to the west, and Araneta Avenue to the east.   Travel time to traverse about 500 meters: one hour.   And this is on a Sunday.  Try that on a weekday.  The same condition persists for weeks because no one seems to care that this is happening.   Now multiply that by the number of intersections similarly affected:   Araneta Avenue - Quezon Avenue.  Quezon Avenue - Roosevelt Avenue.  EDSA - Roosevelt Avenue.   And where else can you see that on EDSA, our most critical highway, five out of the six lanes are unusable because of unloading of vegetables for the Cloverleaf market?!

Notice that there are streetlights except where needed most: at the high-speed intersection.  This is at Katipunan-Garcia junction in where else, Quezon City.