Letter from Oman: Of Muscat, its cleanliness and urban planning

More than a decade ago, famous Indian columnist Khushwant Si-ngh was so impressed with the cleanliness of Muscat that he urged his readers to visit the Om-ani capital once before they die.

Obviously, like most big cities, Muscat has also seen an influx of dwellers from the interior and its population has grown.

With the growing population comes the expansion of infrastructure. Hence, Muscat has also expanded but not vertically, the city skyline is not crowded with skyscrapers to accommodate sheer numbers.

Instead, it has spread out horizontally, including Asia's biggest Satellite Township in Al Khodh.

Traffic jams could be a logical conclusion when a city sees growth over a period of time but it is the other way in Muscat, thanks to excellent planning by the Muscat Municipality, which was given the best planned organisation award recently by the United Nations' Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

In the eighties, traffic hold ups in the Muttrah district and main town centre in Ruwi were common.

However, by rearranging the traffic movement and shifting some of the businesses from Muttrah district to newly developed areas like Al Khuwair and beyond, the bottlenecks in Ruwi and Muttrah were removed ensuring a smooth traffic floweven during the peak hours.

And now, a new road network in Al Khuwair, Al Hail and Wadi Adai have ensured that the traffic moves smoothly through the clean highways and streets of Muscat.

Interchanges in Al Khuwair and Wadi Adai areas have been opened now for traffic and have proved to be a boon for people, especially peak-hour travellers. Two new Interchanges are also planned by the Muscat Municipality to ease growing traffic jams near the Book roundabout and Ma'beelah roundabouts.

Interestingly, this area is witnessing a phenomenal growth with new malls and shopping centres being constructed.

Besides commercial complexes, the Sultan Qaboos University is also in the vicinity and the same highway connects Muscat with Sohar and the UAE. Thus this area has potential to turn into a traffic nightmare.

However, the Muscat Mun-icipality officials constantly monitor traffic movement to ensure that bottlenecks don't become a problem for the citizens.

Like the area around the Book roundabout, the Al Khuwair locality in Wilayat of Baushar has become one of the biggest middle class residential areas.

The Al Khuwair roundabout, which is a link between the Ministry area North of Al Khuwair and the residential locality on the other side of the Sultan Qaboos Street, had turned into an area of traffic chaos.

The new interchange and a bridge, built at a cost of RO 7.1 million, over the roundabout, has ensured that the traffic moves smoothly.

Building the interchange and the bridge has been supplemented by upgrading antenna roads in the area. As one Muscat Municipality official said, effort is being made to eliminate every possible bottleneck.

A RO 8.7 million Wadi Adai road project has reduced the distance to Quriyat by half. During the torrential rains in April, this area witnessed major problems as overflowing wadis cut off road links to Quriyat.

However, the new nine km road from Wadi Adai to Amaarat is an all weather road and authorities hope that henceforth such problems would be history.

While roads are being expanded, interchanges and cross bridges built to ease traffic congestion, the municipal authorities have not forgotten the pedestrians. In fact, motorists in Oman give pedestrians utmost respect.

Thus, to protect them from fast and smoothly moving automobiles, five-foot over bridges have been constructed between Al Sarooj Complex and Al Hail on the Sultan Qaboos Street, the main artery in Muscat.

The cleanliness that impresses most visitors to this picturesque city, however, continues to be the hallmark of Muscat. After all, Khushwant Singh's advice was right – visit Muscat before you die.