CasaNova

Well as you have all seen the construction of the New Bridge and another new one announced, above all of this the expansions of all the Roads in the city Just to Curb the growing Traffic situation or mess would be the appopriate word to use But I can tell you NOTHING will work to improve the situation. I think for the Next 10 more generations we will only see roads works here in Dubai.

And if this action on what the Municipality thinks will improve the situation Than we seriously have a bigger problem than what we have from the traffic.


I think the UAE government must Create a "Ministry of Public Transportation" which we only concentrate on this specific part of the role rather then Dubai Municipality which is also faced with the burden of stray cats, road works and most importantly Cockroaches.


The UAE must send some experts in the field to Germany to study the Transport system and copy all the positive aspect of it. Like Inner Buses and Outer Buses.

Also How UAE can create Bus and taxi lanes only.

I think only this will solve the problem of traffic and Nothing will. And they can mark my words for it.

shiva

ah but therein lies the problem of all modern cities......we like our space and privacy, hence public transports lack of appeal. even if you have an outstanding system, people, when given a choice will tend not to use it.

TA5

I agree, I don't really see them doing anything to 'solve' the traffic problem. Their policy has been far too reactionary (ie...build more lanes or an interchange where the traffic jams are) versus anticipatory (ie...hmm...emirates hills, the marina, maybe interchange 5 won't be sufficient).

It's why you won't see an improvement in Interchange 5 traffic for 2 years while they build the new interchange 5. If they had thought ahead a little more, an interchange with capacity tied to expected traffic flow should have been in place before the first villa/flat opened.

And this 'making beach road wider project' is just a mess.

A real, efficient public transport system wouldn't hurt either. And I'm not talking about the monorail which I don't see as anything more than another marketing gimmick for dubai (1 hour from Media city to Deira, please). Not to mention the time and additional traffic mess it's construction will cause.

CasaNova

I will be the first one to agrees to this. But for people who like to have the luxury of this privacy than let them pay more, by increasing the cost of Vehicle Registration thus using that Income the Gov can build the Public transport system luxurius and convenient.


So that will make the people in the buses laughing all the way to work.


But its pointless and worthless to increase the vehicle registraion fees or anything that sort with-out a proper trasnporation system in place. Its just pathetic.

Desert Dweller

When we lived in Venezuela there was this system called 'Dia de Parada' in which cars with a certain number at the end of their couldn't drive on a certain day. 1 for Monday, 2 for Tuesday etc.... it worked quite well but in the UAE it would get flouted by 80% of the population. It is supposed to promote car pooling and using public transport one day of the week at least.
But the public transport system has waaay to far to go before they can look at any realistic changes. look at so many big cities, even here in Hong kong, which have an effective, cheap and well used tram system.

Desert Dweller

The problem there is that so many people can afford whatever it costs. As usual it would be the lower/working class which gets spooned.

As for interchange 5- I remember when they had to close it so the trucks could go over it to reach the building sites- you'd have thunk that would be enough of a heads up!

TA5

I think one of the problems here is how spread out things are, it isn't like most big cities where there is a well defined 'downtown' that can be an intersection point for public trasport, be it rail or bus. In Washington most of the metrorail lines converge in the middle of the city (the 'Central Business District') and basically keep going, bisecting the city several times. This would not be possible in Dubai, as you have large employment centers such as JAFZ, DIC/DMC, Sheikh Zayed Road near the Trade Center, and Deira/Bur Dubai.

Desert Dweller

Some sort of 'Park and Ride' would be a good idea too but we're all so attached to our cars and want the convenience of parking next to our front door and not having to sit on a bus surrounded by sweaty folk.
You could have one pretty much each of the areas you mentioned.

Welivehere

Apart from the bridge over the creek and the various rumours about widening SZR, Beach Road etc I am not that aware of the the plans to improve the traffic flow.

Personally I don't see the point in widening road without doing something about the bottle neck point's first, for instance what good does it do to widen SZR so that instead of the existing 5 lanes you will then have to filter seven lanes into three under Trade Centre or over Garhoud? For me the emphasis should be resolving these point prior to other solutions and more importantly addressing peoples general attitude to driving in the ME.

A short term fix would be more aggressive traffic management by the police for instance (never gonna happen I know ) if they were to strictly enforce lane discipline and stop people from driving right to the end of queue then cutting in the traffic would flow faster. The original idea of a filter was to act like a zip "left car go one, right car go on, left car go one" etc etc instead here people drive right to the end and then fight there way in causing queuing further back. If the police were to stand 100m down the queue and force people to go which ever way they were in the lane for at that point I would imagine after a couple of times of getting sent round the houses people would start to get the idea. if you try to drive up the outside lane of the traffic and then try to get in at the lights rater than allowing you to do it the police send you straight on, you were in that lane so you must have wanted to go that way.. Ta Ta...

Another one to help would be start prosecuting people for tailgating, the issue here is cause an effect. The car being tail gated is forced to brake lightly (for whatever reason), the car behind panics and brakes a bit harder, the car behind that therefore a little harder so each time the car ends up travelling a little slower so by the time you go back 20-30 cars people are actually stationary. And for what? coz the guy at the front realised he was breaking the speed limit by a couple of klicks so braked slightly to reduce speed, knock on, knock on, knock on.

I have spent a lot of my driving life in high performance cars (except since I moved here) and therefore decided that if I was going to drive these cars then I had best learn to do it properly, to that effect I spent time on a number of aggressive, defensive, track and road days learning to both control the car and the conditions under which I drive.

The thing is having done all of that driving over here "scares" me, not in the literal "shite I'm going to die" sense but more in the "how the hell did that person ever get a license and be allowed to control a vehicle on the open road". A lot of the time I can just see accidents waiting to happen. An even scarier thought was that before I got here I actually though that with the great weather a motorbike would be a great way to get about.... if I had of two weeks max, I could have given Barry Sheen a run for his money in the who has more bolts and plates in their body competition....

I appreciate that different cultures have different attitudes to driving and the responsibilities in entails but driving in Dubai could be so much easier if every-one was just a little more aware / considerate of what was going on round them and he effect their actions had on other..... I mean could you imagine actually getting to a junction and just some-one lets you out, or you indicate to change lane and rather than speed up the car in that lane adjusts their speed to allow you safe entry..... It's never going to happen and we will all carrying on driving with the "survival of the fittest mode" that we already do, but it a nice thought though eh?

shiva

it is a nice thought. but hey ho it aint never going ta happen

Vimto

Asking for my comments on drivers in Dubai / UAE is an offer to open a whole can of worms.
I have walked away from 2 accidents in my 7 years here when the vehicle I was driving was ‘totaled’, in 1 a woman in a Mercedes ran a red light at speed when I was driving a big Chevy pick-up I was hit at the side and pushed into the path of an oncoming truck who was not able to stop, the police found that she was on her cell phone at the time of the accident and not concentrating. The second was on SZR when my SUV was tail ended at 100 plus by a young soldier who was weaving his way from Abu Dhabi to Dubai on a Wednesday evening, we both hit the central barrier and wrecked both our vehicles.
In both cases I blame the other drivers total lack of awareness of what was going on around them and the fact that their cars are lethal weapons. Neither were taken to court for driving without due care and attention.
We all drive around the Emirates and see poor driving everyday, what amazes me is that the police are not pulling bad drivers over.
Personally I think one cause is the stupid law which requires a written police report for even the most simple of bumps, this keeps the cops way too busy simply filling in forms for insurance companies rather than ‘policing’ our roads. When I lived in Europe the police only had to be informed of any serious road traffic injuries involving death or injury, not the simple scrapes as they do here. If the police do not come to the scene of the accident, those involved must themselves collect the names and addresses of all relevant parties - including any witnesses, on the standard forms which are available in all European languages and you carried in your car, if an accident took place between a German and an Italian they both can use the standard European claim form in their own language (see the attached English version). Both parties must sign the form, you then sent the forms to your insurance company. Independent adjudicators from the insurance industry then apportioned fault. Afterwards you could have a report drawn up by the police.

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of police is “the official organization that is responsible for protecting people and property, making people obey the law, finding out about and solving crime, and catching people who have committed a crime”).
I believe that if the cops here really started jumping on drivers who flout the rules of the road, backed up by courts that would take licenses away from the offenders and possibly impose prison terms for repeat offenders and then word would soon get around then I think we would have safer roads. I find it amazing that people (mainly locals) are simply willing to pay large amounts in speeding fines knowing that they can continue driving in the same way the next day with impunity from prosecution.

novita77

park and ride in the cool weather is fine, but not with kids and shopping in tows and 45 degree outside.

Truth Speak

And there was me thinking u were a rufty tufty Nov......lol

novita77

CasaNova

I have witnessed that once near the Old university of wollongong on the beach rd. Some locals broke the red light and hit the Car right behind me, The bang was so loud that my car shock from the impact.


But what do you expect from us? We landed from Camel into Cadillac overnight!

Thus we are not yet able to differentiate between the two.