MADINAH, 4 November 2006 — Guba Souk is located close to downtown Madinah and is a popular shopping hub among people residing in the holy city. However, year in and year out one of the major problems the area suffers from is a continuous chain of cars moving at snail’s pace with no end in sight.
Madinah women love to shop in this wonderfully archaic, narrow winding street that features shops set up in a tightly knit fashion.
Women make up 90 percent of the visitors to the area. From ladies clothes to children’s toys and jewelry, Guba is the place where everything is available at reasonable prices.
“We love coming here to buy things. It is close to downtown Madinah and you can buy everything you want. The only problem we have is the traffic. Coming and going can be rather tough,” said Naila Abdur Rahman, a 35-year-old Saudi housewife who had come to shop in Guba with her young children and sister-in-law.
However, due to the enormous traffic problem, people of Madinah avoid driving to the street in their own cars. There is no parking available and so most shoppers use taxis to enter and exit the area. A normal taxi ride that would usually cost SR5 in any other part of the city would cost SR50 in Guba.
There are two narrow lanes on the street each being no wider than five meters and thus only allowing two cars at one time in opposite directions.
The Madinah Traffic Department has tried to offer temporary solutions to ease the traffic, especially during the Umrah and Haj seasons. Nevertheless congestion and traffic jams are the hallmarks of the Guba Souk.
“The best solution to this problem is to move the souk somewhere else. It is useless having it here,” said Abu Hassan, a shopper struggling to negotiate the crowds.
“In the past Madinah was small and I do not remember facing this problem. Now the number of residents has increased and so has the number of visitors,” he said.
“Expanding the street will cost the government a lot of money because it involves paying real estate owners compensation,” he added.
Badi Al-Raddadi, another shopper who was out with his family agreed with Abu Hassan.
“The best solution is to transfer the souk to the first or second ring road. There are plenty of commercial malls that have recently been opened in those areas. I think that these malls are big enough to accommodate the large number of shops here,” he said.
However, shop owners felt differently. Salman Al-Ahmadi, an owner of a store selling women and children’s clothing in Guba, said that people who thought it would be easy for them to move to the malls available on the first and second ring road should think again.
“If we were to move to those malls then we would end up facing high rental prices. Rents are very high and that would ultimately force us to increase our prices. The people to miss out ultimately will be shoppers, not us,” said Al-Ahmadi.
“The strange thing is that all customers are coming to this street because of the low prices. I don’t understand why they would want us to move,” he said.
Al-Raddadi added, “Mind you we would miss out on the old fashioned look of the street. So another solution is to ban cars from entering the street and turn it into a pedestrian-only street.”
Arab News tried contacting Madinah Municipality for three days but was unable to speak to anyone.
