And all of you (and I) thought that the Dubai Metro which was launched recently, would ease the traffic situation. Ha! Let’s open the topic up just a little and scrutinize the situation.
Us Dubai-ites went through a freaking hot summer, and the only silver lining was the ease in the traffic situation, as it always is in those months. Families fly back home for some time off and the cars on the roads are much lesser than those parked in lots collecting the summer dust. Right towards the end of the summer, they launched the Dubai Metro (only 10 stations out of around double of that planned) and for a few days, you could see the trains filled with people, and many more lining up at the stations. Tourists, all of them. Well, not tourists from outside of town, but people who live here and just want to take a ride on this new amusement vehicle. Not regular users by far. And plus, let’s not forget, it was Ramadan, which always is a lazy time for people of Dubai. At the end of Ramadan, we had the long Eid weekend, and again traffic was an acceptable amount, holiday season-wise.
And then BOOM!
The middle-of-the-week return-to-work morning was filled with conversations of traffic jams all over the city, the likes of which hadn’t been seen for months. Some said it was because everyone was back to work, others said that the recession was getting over so a lot of summer deserters had returned to the promised land to try and make some more money. But I saw a scheme, a nasty scheme behind it all. See, it all started when people talked about the Metro. RTA’s dream project, although tried out by thousands on the first weekend alone, was a critic’s love nest. This is bad, and that is bad, and this is disorganized, and how there’s a mad commotion at the stations, and not enough information provided on the fares, etc. Honestly, I quite liked the Metro, and I understood that it will need some time to smoothen out all of its issues, but the common man is not quite as forgiving. So the word on the street was that the Metro is only good for a cheap ride on the weekend, but not feasible as a form of daily commute. And I’m guessing the Government knew this was coming because suddenly, there seemed a strange rise in traffic all over the city due to “unforeseen” road works. And I saw this:
Crawling at 8km/h
This is right out side of my house, coming from The Greens exit to SZR. By the way, these cars aren’t parked. Just stopped waiting for the traffic ahead to clear. These cars are currently moving perpendicular to SZR, in order to join it through the service road. See that structure parallel to the cars. That’s the new bridge that connects the Greens to DMC and DIC and goes right over SZR. It’s been ready for the last 2 months. But every one’s still waiting for it to open. So all your traffic that’s leaving this area and crossing over the DIC/DMC (which are a lot of people), have to join SZR, head out about a kilometer towards Dubai, take the Sufouh/Umm Suqeim exit, join Jumeirah Beach Road at the Madinat Jumeirah junction, and either join SZR again towards DMC, or take the back road to DMC. And ALL of that would still be okay if it wasn’t for the initial traffic that only slows down further on the pictured stretch.
Picking up some speed at 12km/h. Then bottle necks --> back to 5km/h
As you slowly edge along getting parallel to SZR, another bottle neck appears. Mind you, if you are coming her from The Greens, this is your fourth bottle neck situation, and you’ve spent 40 minutes on a 2km stretch of tarmac! And this new bottle neck, which is a spill over from Emaar Business Park and SZR exits, goes alongside a Gas Station (which many understandably use as an overnight car park), and you notice some suspicious bit of excavation along the sides of the roads, with no one working on them during the day, and it never seems to improve. It’s got “cover-up” smeared all over it! Why on earth would you have these craters on the sides of the roads, and yet you never see workers doing anything about it. The red tape around it tells you not to cross it, and well, you can’t, unless you want your vehicle stuck in that large hole in the ground.
Traffic from Dubai to DMC moving at 25 km/h
And then you finally join the SZR highway and it’s still slow. You look over on the other side, and it’s even slower. No traffic accidents, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing on the radio either. Oh, but wait. Heading towards DMC from Dubai, two SZR lanes are closed! Two! Right outside Interchange 3, and the traffic is backed up all the way to the WTC tunnel! Why? Oh, road works, of course. The big truck with the arrow lights flashing tell you to get out of the last lane on the left, SZR users’ favorite lane!
My conversation with the cabbie turns out to teach me something new. You know those toll gates that we all first hated, but got used to? I honestly, never really try to avoid them, because after a while I accepted the AED 4 toll tax, and realized that it was a faster option anyway. Well, word at the RTA is, they’re hiking up the toll tax by 100%, to AED 8. Yup, you read right, believe it or not. So now, when you clear out of ALL the downtown traffic and join the highways and bridges (SZR, Safa, Garhoud or Maktoum), you will face the joy of paying twice as much in tax to cross those roads. Either that, or you head towards the shady two-laned back roads like Al Wasl, Jumeirah Beach Road or worse Shindaga!
And why is all of this happening, you may ask? Let me tell you. Even though the RTA Metro project is incomplete, they still want you to use the train (even if it is nowhere near to your starting point or destination), with aid from those feeder buses to make your journey traffic-free, but longer and more tedious. Why would they do that, and not wait until ALL the stations are open? Because unless you spend some money using the current facilities, they won’t make enough to build the rest of it. A vicious circle, this, I tell you. This promise of all the stations being open by February 2010 are relying heavily on YOUR funds that can come in either through your using the Metro now, or paying Salik tax (which will increase) or through speeding fines you will pay once you realize the traffic has made you really late for your 9 o’clock with the client.
