Traffic chaos rant.

Yesterday the RTA created gridlock most of the morning in Dubai Marina.

Over the weekend they closed a major road with no warning. No no new signs were erected. No 'Changed road conditions' signs.

Nothing.

So motorists went the way they've been going for a year and found this:



The only sign warning drivers of this is a couple of hundred metres from the blocked road. A small temporary sign, black on yellow, which is easy to miss in all the construction clutter and the dangerous traffic:



By the time they reach this sign it's too late, the narrow, local, residential roads, already choked with construction traffic and parked cars, are jammed solid. With more and more vehicles coming up behind plus hundreds trying to leave the buildings in the area.

People were trapped in their vehicles for three hours or more. It was the first item on radio news reports, so it was well publicised.

Seeing the problem they'd created and the simple cure for it, erecting signage, the RTA took immediate action to make sure they fixed the problem and avoided a repeat. Didn't they?

If they gave a damn they would have.

Being the RTA they did absolutely nothing.

They simply let the gridlock happen all over again this morning.

The concierge in our building came around before 7am to warn us that traffic was jammed outside our car park. Too late, we couldn't get out so we got on with work on our computers at home.

At just before 10am he came back to let us know the traffic was clearing.

Three hours of gridlock again.

The original fiasco is an example of the incompetent management we've come to expect. The lack of action to correct their mistake is an example of arrogance and a don't-give-a-damn attitude.

They call this management?

The whole management of the roads is a disaster. They can't get even the simple things right.

Just take this one small area I'm talking about. When you drive along Al Sufouh Road towards Jebel Ali/Abu Dhai there are very few signs to those destinations.

Eventually there is one - it directs drivers past the obvious last connection to Sheikh Zayed Road at the completed Interchange 5 and on to Dubai Marina.



That was always a breathtakingly stupid route to direct drivers along.

When you're into the beginning of Dubai Marina there's another sign to Abu Dhabi, easy to miss in all the construction clutter. If you happen to spot it, it tells you to go back the way you've come, so many people tend to ignore it and go straight ahead.

For about a year that's been the way to Jebel Ali/Abu Dhabi for hundreds, probably thousands, of vehicles.

Then with no warning the road is closed.

How long are these people going to remain in their jobs, causing by their incompetence such huge chaos, pollution, financial losses?



PS:

By the way, well done to Dubai Police.

When eventually, after 10am, we were able to get out, a lone traffic cop was standing in the sun, in the heat and dust, doing his best to get the traffic moving. He was over-riding a red signal which is always a bottle-neck, when it was safe to do so, waving the traffic through.

To the anonymous cop, well done and thank you. You saw a problem and took action to solve it. Give me your name and I'll vote for you to be the new boss of the RTA.