DUBAI, 6 September 2007 — Motorists in Dubai are complaining that road work in the emirate has brought traffic to a virtual standstill in some areas. Many are blaming the Road and Transport Authority (RTA) for the traffic chaos saying that some of the diversions are poorly planned.
The RTA started widening Al-Ittihad Road and a stretch of Salah Uddin Road, both major arteries that link Dubai to neighboring Sharjah. The daily traffic on Al-Ittihad Road alone is about 250,000 vehicles. Traffic on both roads is also affected by the Dubai Metro project.
Some residents of Deira told Arab News that they have become virtual prisoners in their own neighborhoods. Ahmad Al-Mehairi, who lives in Al-Muheisinah, complained that it took him two hours to run an errand in nearby Hamriya. “Before the road works it would take me at the most 30 minutes to run that errand,” he said. “Traffic has become so bad that I actually don’t go anywhere after work.”
Khaled, who works at the Ministry of Labor on Al-Ittihad Road, said it takes him 40 minutes to just enter the parking area.
“It’s only a small strip of road but we get stuck for so long that sometimes vehicles break down. The traffic jam has added so much stress on my life,” he said.
The chairman of the RTA, Matar Al-Tayer, says the road projects are a necessity in order to meet the increasing demands on the transportation infrastructure, saying the traffic flow in Dubai is expected to reach 22 million trips per day in the year 2020 compared to the current five million trips. He stressed that any delay in implementing these projects will exacerbate congestion levels.
Addressing concerns over why the municipality has decided to do two major projects simultaneously (the widening of Al-Ittihad and the work on Salah Uddin), Al-Tayer said the decision was made because officials considered it better to expedite both projects rather than doing one after the other, since both required immediate attention. “The number of road projects currently being implemented is so large that it would be very difficult to avoid the side effects,” he said.
The estimated cost of the undergoing road projects is about AED8 billion, he added, which he says illustrates the enormity of the process. The current spending exceeds all previous spending over the past decade.
“In addition to that the construction of the Dubai Metro project, which costs about AED16 billion, requires further traffic diversions in many congested areas throughout its route extending about 70 kilometers,” he added.
