Driving In The Philippines

Driving in Metro Manila is such an adventure. You just can’t imagine what you’re going to see next. Here are some of the ones I’ve actually seen, I kid you not.

I’ll start with the infamous bus lanes. These lanes are dedicated for buses and run along the outermost lane of the whole length of EDSA. Motorists can enter it only when they are turning right. But where exactly you can enter the lane remains unclear as the lane marker is usually just one long solid yellow line. The broken yellow lines are too close to where the road diverge up or down an overpass/underpass. So what happens is if you enter too soon and you get apprehended by the boys in blue for using the bus lane. But enter too late and you get apprehended for swerving.

I suppose they have your best interest in mind since the bus lane is populated by sleepy bus drivers, extremely wide-awake bus drivers, speed freak bus drivers, and everything else in between. They speed and swerve around like maniacs and they even take it outside the bus lane. Sadly, sometimes to fatal consequences.

Then there are the huge U-turn lanes on the innermost lanes. Yes lanes, they take up one, sometimes two, sometimes even three lanes. They become bottlenecks that slow down traffic very well thank you. They’re probably just an interim solution since it seems the eventual objective is the outrageous idea called the elevated U-turn. To its credit, it seems to be working so not all’s bad. Of course, the ideal solution would have been an interchange. But I guess after all the “mandatory deductions”, they ended up with a budget only for an elevated U-turn.

Then there are the useless traffic lights. They either have a broken light (or even two) or seem to be perfectly working except that the boys in blue are waving vague hand signals to everyone. So motorist usually just try to guess what they should do based on what everyone else is doing. How’s that for a democratic traffic system?

But of course you still need to be careful because if you’re at the tail end of the herd, some boy in blue just might decide you’re beating the red light or violating their hand signals and apprehend you.

Then there are the entrepreneurial boys in blue. No less than Bayani Fernando, the top boy in blue, admitted that traffic rules and regulation will need to be well thought out otherwise his boys will take advantage of them. That’s one important  trait of an entrepreneur: grab the opportunity when you see it. And you can bet grab it they will.

If you’ll notice, quite a few of the boys in blue these days are equipped with motorcycles with green license plates. A taxi driver has this interesting theory that those bikes are privately owned by the boys in blue but they use them while on duty because malakas ang kita. They use the bikes to chase after traffic violators and charge them traffic violation penalties on-site. Doesn’t sound too far-fetched, does it? How’s that for a free market traffic system?

So what’s next? Something for you to find out.