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| Photo from Khaleej TImes Online |
This past week has been the worst(est) traffic jam I’ve ever experienced in Ittihad Sharjah-Dubai Road. I left Sharjah 6:40am and reached Hor Al Anz, DEIRA 8:50am. That’s a whopping 2 hours and 10 minutes road trip for a distance less than 12km. My everyday travel used to be an hour given the constant morning rush. This week, 90minutes is the shortest I could.
The reason? Some construction is going on at the border of Dubai and Sharjah. Khaleej Times reported that the 6-year closed Mamzar Exit is being reconstructed and will be converted into an exclusive ‘Bus and Taxi Only’ lane. Any private vehicles that would enter will be fined AED600.
Bus and Taxi Lane for Sharjah-Dubai Road
Will it really ease the traffic? Honestly, it’s highly unlikely that much. The lane is just about a kilometer long, and starts at the foot of Al Nahda bridge. The morning traffic clog in Sharjah commonly starts beyond the 2nd subway in Al Wahda Road.
Also, public buses in Sharjah leave every 20minutes, and there are only about 6-8 Dubai terminal destinations – that’s just 8 Dubai-bound buses leaving every 20 minutes (add the one Abu Dhabi bound bus that leaves every hour). I don’t see that much Dubai-bound taxis every morning as well. Bottom line, it is still the private cars that clog the roads.
Public buses also only use the Al Wahda Road. Traffic jam starts actually from other sub-highways that leads to the bottleneck Ittihad Road. Al Khan and Al Nahda bridges alone bring a volume of cars in the morning.
But anyway, the effort is appreciable. I hope my theories are wrong. I hope this move would at least slowly ease the spelled Sharjah-Dubai traffic. Rumors say that this lane will be opened on 1st of November which is the RTA Public Transport Day.