Thursday, May 17, 2007

Police chief vs RTA (cont'd).

It's good to see that Dubai's chief of Traffic Police is unrelenting on exposing and criticising the mismanagement of the RTA. He talks a lot of sense, obviously knows his job very well and, unusually in this region, does not hesitate to express criticism of things he believes to be wrong.

Brigadier Mohammed Saif Al Zafein is again attacking the ridiculous toll road decisions taken by the RTA, and has added the telling statement that: "The RT officials didn't approach the traffic department for consultation or advice in our speciality, which is road safety and traffic flow. We learnt about it from the media."

His criticism of the new toll goes into quite some detail of its likely effects, none of them positive. Drivers will simply skip around the two toll reader points, we don't yet have a fully functioning road system or public transport network, alternative roads can't take the planned extra diveted traffic. "...if they go ahead with it, it will negatively impact motorists and traffic accidents will increase." he said.

Its satisfying to have someone of the Brigadier's position highlighting some of the deficiencies of the RTA. I've been doing that for a long time (my label 'mismanagement' will take you to the posts) but no-one in a position of power even knows about this blog, let alone reads it, so it's no more than me getting frustrated and letting off steam. The Brigadier, on the other hand, is in a powerful position, the media reports what he says and I'm sure he has wasta - whether he or the RTA has more is the key question.

The Gulf News report is here.

1 comment:

trailingspouse said...

Yes, it looks like there might be quite a little ding-dong going on between Dubai Police and the RTA at the moment.

If the RTA didn't consult the Police, they probably didn't consult Civil Defence either. I wonder what effect the road toll will have on their response times in Jumeirah & Umm Suqeim?