Unannounced of course and with just one sign right at the entrance so it's catching motorists out. That means last minute lane-changing adding to the hazards on the roads.
It's goes off right from Dubai Marina's outer ring road (I do wish they'd name the roads!) just in front of Phase 1 and obviously swings across Sheikh Zayed Road. The sign says it's to Al Quoz and Dubai, so it must have two exits at the other end, one onto SZR and the other into the industrial area.
It will hopefully ease the jam that tails back along this road from the Mina Seyahi traffic lights. They also seem to have changed the timing of those lights, so the traffic from Dubai Marina towards Media City is slightly less gridlocked now.
One of the things adding to the congestion has been the opening of yet another of Interchange 5's flyovers, a couple of weeks ago. This one comes in from SZR from the Jebel Ali direction - instead of manoeuvring through the vast construction site that is Interchange 5 you now filter off SZR to the right and find you're on a flyover above the confusion. Another flyover from somewhere-or-other joins it halfway along, then you have a choice of three exits.
I was so bemused by it all I can't remember the third one but one is Al Sufouh Road another is Dubai Marina. That takes you out at the little local traffic light junction at Phase 1, the entrance to what was the overflow car park and Spinneys.
You can see this flyover just to the right of centre in this photo - you can also see here's still a lot of work to be completed and it's going to have roads coming and going from all directions by the look of it.
I've been avoiding this gridlocked area for a couple of weeks, going the long but quicker way to Ibn Battuta Mall and back along SZR to Media City. Tomorrow I'll give the Marina way a try to see whether it's any better.
3 comments:
Our taxi driver got hellishly confused on the new parts last Saturday as we headed for Ibn Battuta Mall.
We spent about 10 minutes going round and over and round and over before we finally found the right way to go!
It would be better if the signage allowed for about 50m warning, but it's currently placed right at the exit points. Hopefully this will improve....
Yes it's something I regularly complain about - it's not all down to the bad driving. The bad, misleading, confusing signage causes a hell of a lot of problems.
It all LOOKS very futuristic I'm sure, but the increasing complexity of the interchanges is just adding to the traffic chaos. In so many cases, you have no sense of where the roads are taking you. Whatever happened to the straightforward cloverleaf?
As you've said before, Dubai started with a blank canvas. We could have had a basic grid system with regularly spaced intersections. Instead we have a road network that looks like a bowl of spaghetti.
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