Dubai - As Dubai residents and professionals travelling to and from the emirate get increasingly stuck in traffic, the real costs to the commuter rise drastically
Published: Sun 18 Dec 2016, 7:39 AM
Updated: Sun 18 Dec 2016, 3:27 PM
Motorists and commuters continue to brace themselves for traffic jams as the weather cools down in Dubai.
The daily grind for those going home from work has always been a perennial problem and the usual bottleneck areas during peak
hours from 5 to 8pm have actually worsened in the past few weeks. Like the Shindagha Tunnel heading towards Sharjah from Bur Dubai; it has been one of the usual problems of motorists, taking them at least half an hour to cover a distance of two kilometres.
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At a glance, this problem can easily be attributed to Dubai's increasing population and congestion. According to reports, for every two Dubai residents, there is one car and this makes the congestion
index relatively higher than or similar to some of the most congested cities in the world.
According to the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), Dubai's vehicle density of 540 cars per 1,000 people is the highest in the region and one of the highest in the world. The number of vehicles in Dubai has doubled in the last eight years, from 740,000 at the end of 2006 to 1.4 million at the end of 2014, an average annual increase of 8.2 per cent, which is also one of the highest in the world.
"At 8.2 per cent, the average annual increase of vehicles in Dubai is very high. If this same annual increase rate continues in the future, the number of registered vehicles in Dubai can reach around 2.22 million vehicles in the year 2020," the RTA said. Moreover, studies conducted by RTA show that around 450,000 vehicles enter Dubai on an average every day from other emirates, with the city welcoming 40,000 vehicles in the morning peak hours every day.
The majority of these vehicles - around 33,500 in the morning and 370,000 on an average weekday - enter Dubai from the northern emirates. This increase in private vehicles in Dubai has definitely led to increasing traffic congestion despite massive expansion in roads and other infrastructure.
Dubai's growing daytime population too is a major cause of congestion. According to Dubai Statistics Centre, the current resident population of Dubai is 2.56million (as of October 1, 2016) but the act-ive daytime population has an additional one million more people.
Professionals working in Dubai spend an average of 1 hour and 45 minutes commuting to and from work, according to studies.
Even if Dubai has expanded its infrastructure extensively since 2006, the annual loss has reached an equivalent of Dh4.6 billion due to loss in time and fuel, Phil Clarke, principal consultant at the Transport Research Laboratory, told Khaleej Times.
"The cost for individuals delayed by congestion will vary considerably depending upon the reason for the journey, but health-wise, congestion can increase harmful emissions and can lead to increases in stress levels, especially when somebody is running late. This, in turn, can lead to anti-social driving habits, such as queue jumping, or speeding once a driver is clear of the congestion, with all its associated dangers," Clarke said.
The main solution, therefore, that will surely make a huge imp-act is to get more vehicles off Dubai roads. Even if the city road network is expanded, it will not be enough to keep pace with the increasing population and demand for cars.
Public transport has to be agg-ressively promoted too. Here's the bright note: according to RTA, 539.56 million riders used public transport in 2015, a notable increase from the 531.35 million riders in 2014. In the first six months of this year alone, 273,452,791 riders took public transport in the first half of 2016, up from the 271,302,000 riders in the same period last year.
angel@khaleejtimes.com
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