Last night my wife (The Unofficial Cook) and I had a good chuckle at a real estate ad she found on a Philippine   newspaper website.  It was an obvious typo, instead of describing a house as being on a tree lined street they had written that it was on a "Three lined street".  A simple sort of mistake that any of us could have made … but we laughed none the less.

Then I got to thinking about what a ‘Three-lined street" might really be like.  Did they mean there were three lines painted down the middle of the street, or did they unconsciously think of a street with an extra line of traffic jammed in where only two would fit?  (yes, I think strange thoughts, you already know that or you wouldn’t be here *smile*).

I really need to put up some videos on my own here … some of my readers have absolutely no how traffic flows and doesn’t flow here in the Philippines … I’ll get on that project right away soon now.  But for the meantime you might want to have a look at the basic driving in the Philippines video my friend Bob Martin posted recently.

Many streets here just don’t have lines painted on them.  And for those that do, the lines are nothing more really than a suggestion.  In the US, virtually no roads have lane widths less than 9 feet wide (the Interstate standard is 12 feet).  Nine feet is nearly three meters., twelve feet close to 4.  The average small car needs less than 2 meters of space.  So let’s consider a street with two 3 meter-wide lanes, one in each direction.  That’s about 6 meters of roadway width and only about 4 meters taken up by vehicles … hmm, 6-4 leaves 2 … another whole lane of traffic.

Now poor country or not, the Filipino has a great tradition summed up by the Tagalog word "simot", which translates into using up the very last bit of everything.  So if you were a driver and you saw 2 meters or so of excess pavement … paid for by the taxes of the poor and the rich alike, would you waste that space, or would you make simot?  I think you can guess the answer.

Now given this scenario you might be thinking, ok that extra two meter’s he’s talking about … I can see how it can be useful, but given that traffic flows both ways on that street, which direction is that traffic going to flow?  An excellent question, and an excellent, democratic answer (the Philippines is much more democratic than say the US, where everyone seems to wait for some central government to tell them what to do).  the democratic answer is, whichever way it wants to … he who gets there first rules, and if the timing is in question of who was first, he who is bigger wins.

Sometimes this practice is set up officially, where traffic is ordered to flow against oncoming traffic by public officials/law enforcement.  That’s referred to as "counterflow". such as the traffic legally on the ‘wrong" span of the bridge in Bob’s video.  However, "counterflow" is rumored to be apart of the Philippine Constitution (I haven’t, as yet, looked it up).  It’s authorized to be invoked by any citizen (or any foreigner who wants to pose as a Pinoy) at any time s/he decides to partake of the right. 

thus "Three-lined" streets are more the norm than the exception … if there is space, you use it.  As a parting thought, for our two-wheel (powered or un-powered) enthusiasts … consider that a two-wheeler needs less and a meter of space … so how many extra lanes cane you get in using bicycles/motorcycles.

The Philippines.  I love it.  Real democracy in action.

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