Saturday, July 21, 2007

Going to Dubai / traffic.

If you are going to Dubai you really need to try and plan ahead.
Post Salik (road toll - 4dhs) there are parts of Dubai where the traffic congestion is horrific and it can take you much longer to get to your destination than you might expect. Think about where you are staying and where you are trying to get to .
If the congestion caused by Salik isn't enough then be aware that there are diversions that have been set up around big construction sites that are related to the Metro. Also the authorities are doing a massive expansion of the road system and that is causing big hold ups / diversions as well.
You will read in the papers that the traffic on Sheikh Zayed Road flows quite freely now, which is true but there are not so many articles that talk about the chaos in some areas which are adjacent to SZR (on the portion that is tolled) where people are trying to avoid paying the toll.
Plan your route carefully. Timing can be important as well, especially when the schools go back, we haven't seen the Salik impact yet with the schools open.

The above brings a thought about the development that is going on in Oman. Are the authorities on top of the potential increase in traffic that will result from the development?

3 comments:

Sleepless In Muscat said...

Forget about that.

Have the authorities in Dubai considered the increased number of vehicles that are running on their roads to the point of thinking of other solutions to bring down the congestion levels?

Like car pooling, or shuttle services and the such?

hnd said...

All these numbers are a bit E&OE.
Dubai currently has something just over 500 buses and is currently introducing some 80 of those "bendy" buses.

They have just introduced 10 water buses in the Creek area.

The Metro (phase 1) will be about 70kms and will be up and running in about 2.5 years or a bit longer. Current plan is that there will be 318kms by 2020.

Parts of the roads system are being substantially redesigned.
One or two features:
The will be one road which will be double decked!
Parts of the Emirates Road will be 6 lanes in either direction.
The Arabian Ranches roudabout will have 13 bridges on 3 levels and be the biggest in the UAE. Currently if you drive around it it's 1.9kms around the edge and most of that is at speeds of 70kph or more....scary!

They are building several more bridges to increase the numbers crossing the Creek.

So to answer your question, yes they are doing something about it, it's just in the meantime parts of Dubai are turning into a disaster.

The above list of what they doing is by no means a full list and I have probably missed something very obvious.

If you coming to Dubai plan where you go and at what time.

hnd said...

Oh and car pooling.
I think (think only) that its illegal in Dubai on the basis that if the passengers give the driver some money towards petrol etc etc then the driver is accepting money and thus he is acting like a taxi and he doesn't have a taxi license. I'm really not sure about this though.