Monday 10 June 2013

No driving for me?

There is an interesting news I read today on one proposal to restrict driver’s licenses for Qatar expats in an effort to alleviate Qatar’s traffic problems, then again thought to myself...oppss, nope, not interesting.
Not a good idea...

Reason?
Because the restriction will include stay home people like thus make us a really 'house-bound' person.

After more then five years living tenth months of my yearly life in this country, no doubt, I have seen much difference and development in Qatar. They had a better airport then the one I transited in during my flight in 2001, and the bigger better one will be in operation soon, hopefully (the postponement from couple of months can be dragged to years). There had been more choices of  south asian foodstuff, more non-arabic or indans restaurants, and of course there are more people in malls even not a weekends.
And the traffic is getting bad.

There wasn't any traffic problems when I first arrived here.
Even if there is, it wont consumed much of your time at a roundabout with traffic-lights (an invention I though to be pointless and dangerous-- especially with people's driving attitude here).
But now, try go to the mall on weekends, despite them building more and more malls around Doha-- you'll bound to be having problems getting your car parked besides bound to be walking among loads of people like it was a some sort of festivities going on.  

Being a small country, Qatar will definitely be facing bad traffic just like other developing capital worldwide.
With massive development and upgrading for the FIFA World Cup2022, the proposed licence restriction won't do any justice.

The government should instead look at upgrading their inner roads which link to the main roads, which, in my opinion the real problem maker.  Make new diversions because some of the newly developed highways don't served as highways when there'd be traffic lights and people shifting lanes to get into the inner roads. This sort of highways to me, does not serve any purpose.
Shifting commercial or government offices and an area outside of Doha might help too.

Here the businesses are concentrated.
For example-- if you need to get your car upholstery done, you'll go to one area and there will be more than five shops offering the the services with very minimal price or choice differences.
So does having your car tyre changed, or keys duplicated.

The other problem surrounding this capital is the lack of parking lots both for commercial and leisure  activities (very evident and im do not understand to the whys Qatar don't do multilevel  underground parking lots-- or multi level like the parking lots or better still smart parking lots) which will obviously lead driver to park along the road near favourite malls or favourite spot such as the corniche.

Given a huge allocation for both infra and health of QR48 Billion, hopefully Qatar government will be able plan better transportation route,  developing roads and provide more public transport system.

With latest count of 879,039 cars on Qatar’s roads,an increase of more than 200,000 vehicles in comparison to 2010,  and growing population growing -- Qatar must learn from other developed capital of the world in easing traffic problems.

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