Highways or city roads, traffic clogs the thoughts of motorists

There is one subject that always seems to occupy the thoughts of Dubai residents: traffic.

Gridlocked roads have become the norm for many motorists, who have to sit for hours each day just to get to and from work.

Among the measures, which were reported in Gulf News on Monday, is the construction of a new bridge over Dubai Creek between Al Shindagha Tunnel and Al Maktoum Bridge.

Additionally, a new bridge with seven lanes in each direction will be built to replace the existing Al Garhoud Bridge.

There is another crossing over the creek called the Ras Al Khor Bridge that is already under construction.

Gulf News spoke to a range of Dubai residents to find out if they thought these measures would help to make life easier for car drivers.

One person keen to praise the municipality's work was Prasannan Asan, 48, an engineer from India.

"They are sensible measures and it has to be done because the traffic can be very bad at times," he said.

Firas Rahhal, a 30-year-old architect from Jordan, took a similar view, saying the new developments could play a major part in reducing congestion.

Syrian ceramic importer Ahmad Al Safdi, 23, also applauded the decision to build more bridges across Dubai Creek.

Iraqi business manager Ahmad Hamadi, 26, said he thought the new bridges planned and the expansion of Al Garhoud Bridge would be enough to cope with the greater amount of traffic expected as the city expands.

Indian shop owner Anuradha Sagr, 29, said the measures announced earlier this month by Dubai Municipality were "good".

"Traffic gets stuck a lot at the moment, particularly in the afternoon, so this is what's needed. It's good to have more bridges and wider roads.

"It can take half an hour to go through the tunnel under the creek so it is excellent they are making these improvements," he said.

Teacher Faezeh Denton-Cardew, 54, who is British of Iranian origin, said she expected the extra highways would have "a little bit" of an effect on the traffic.

She was concerned that more roads would encourage more car use and so traffic congestion might not be reduced in the long term.

"They should make another road like Emirates Road outside Dubai. That's what I think," she said.

Gigi Robinson, who is British of Mauritian origin, said the new road and building programmes were needed but she feared by the time they were completed the amount of traffic on the city's roads would have increased and the gridlock would remain.

The 50-year-old, who works in the information security industry, added: "There is such a rush of traffic into Bur Dubai and Deira and I cannot see that this will improve.

"It would be good if public transport was improved, although how this could be done I'm not sure."

British teacher Sally Malkawi, 39, who lives in Garhoud, said she has to cross Dubai Creek every day and so for her the extra bridges will be "very useful".

"I can sit in traffic for more than an hour just to get across the bridge. I can see where I live from the car but I cannot get there because it is gridlocked. If the new bridges are free to use they will certainly ease congestion," she said.

However, Malkawi said she did not think an extra lane on Shaikh Zayed Road would do much to ease the traffic jams the highway regularly suffers. "They put an extra lane on the M25, which is the road that goes all the way around London, and that made no difference," she said.

Instead, she thought making Shaikh Zayed Road a double decker with a complete extra road on top of the existing one, an option suggested in the past would be worth considering.

Riza Van Sehie, 48, a veterinary nurse from South Africa, said she was not sure that extra lanes on existing roads would provide a long-term solution to Dubai's traffic woes.

She said it would be a good idea to build a road that runs straight through from the Abu Dhabi side of Dubai to the Sharjah side of the city, but that does not have any exits in the city itself. This, she thought, would free up many of the roads in Dubai itself from all the through traffic.

"There is just too much traffic in the city at the moment," she said.

One person firmly against building new roads or bridges is 40-year-old Dutch legal consultant Wim Vanderhorst.

"I'm very left wing and I always say the more lanes, the more cars. I don't think building more roads and bridges will solve the problems.

"We should get people out of their cars, and to do this we need more public transport, higher petrol prices and increases in road tax," he said.