Cleaning up Dubai Marina

In the past I've complained several times about the lack of street cleaning in Dubai Marina. The main road and area around Marina Walk in Phase 1 were done but in spite of dozens of towers being finished and thousands of people moving in, the rest of the streets were simply left in a filthy state.

I complained not only on here but to Emaar, who sent their contractor out to assess the situation, after which nothing changed.

Well now it has changed, so I shouild comment on that.

At long, long last, the general paving of footpaths and roundabouts is being done - all subject to being constantly dug up again of course - and street cleaning is happening alongside it.

We have an enclosed sweeper truck doing the rounds...



...so much better than that open truck that throws up more dust than it collects.

And we have dozens of sweepers with simple domestic brooms, dustpan & brush and black plastic bags.

Not high tech but they do a great job.

Some things don't change

In spite of the huge changes, some things in the city stay the same, and it's good to see.

Al Wasl Road and in front of me was a pick-up full of goats.

More RTA planning

"The emirate's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) is considering increasing hourly parking charges to encourage motorists to leave their cars at home and switch to public transport. And fines for parking offences are set to go up.

The RTA estimates that currently only seven per cent of the population use public transport while the rest use private means – a major cause of congestion.

People in Dubai believe that owning a vehicle is a status symbol. That is why some families have more than one car, which is an unnecessary burden to the roads. We have to find ways of eliminating this burden."

Sorry to interrupt the explanations about the problem, but I'd like to add an observation.

The reason so many of us use our private cars is because we don't have a public transport system. Nor do we have enough taxis.

We have no alternative to using our cars.

Even when the Metro opens next year it will serve only a tiny part of the huge area that is now Dubai.

The current bus service is far from adequate and all the news reports I've seen have pointed out flaws in the system.

Oh, and the RTA has added unnecessary bureaucracy to car pooling, making it less attractive to people who would otherwise car pool.

Getting us out of our cars and onto public transport depends on providing a public transport system that is efficient, convenient, clean, safe, reliable and gets us where we want to go when we want to go there.

That we don't have.


The story about how the RTA plans to deter us from using our cars is in EmBiz247, here.

Fires and crashes

Two stories in todays papers I thought worth commenting on.

In EmBiz247 we're told that Atlantis will open on schedule on September 24 in spite of the recent fire, pictures of which I posted a couple of weeks ago.

Well, sort of.

We have more detail than we've been given previously about the opening of the $1.5 billion resort on Palm Jumeirah.

The area affected by the fire won't open on schedule, and that's the Lobby. Instead they've set up two temporary lobbies, one in each tower. The real Lobby won't open until mid-October and in the meantime guests will have golf cart shuttles.

Less than half the hotel's 1,539 rooms will open on September 24, only between 600 and 800 will be open on opening day.

Then in The Times there's a report on the dangers of texting while driving, quoting research from Britain's Transport Research Laboratory.

It's worse than drink driving folks.

According to TRL's research, reaction times of texters slows by 35% (drink is 12%), their stopping distance increases by 10 metres at 50kph, their steering control is 91% poorer than drivers actually paying attention to their driving, in other words, they're more prone to drifting out of their lane. As we know from driving on Sheikh Zayed Road. Or on Al Wasl Road as I was this morning, taking evasive action from a Toyota Landcruiser drifting about while the driver concentrated on his mobile phone call.

I hope the police and law makers here have a copy of the research and will act accordingly.



The stories are here:

Atlantis.

Moronic drivers.

Bomb 'joker' gets jail

A follow-up to last Thursday's post about the Brit who thought it was a good joke to pretend to set off a bomb on an Emirates flight into Dubai. He'll have four months in the slammer to rethink his idea of humour.

Good.

The mysterious part of the sentence to me is that he was also fined Dh1,000 for consuming alcohol.

I've never understood the law on alcohol. It's freely available yet it's an offence to drink it.

Under this inexplicable thinking surely Emirates should be charged with aiding and abetting. They served him, as they serve their other passengers, with free alcohol, they pour it for them, they offer them more. Presumably with full knowledge that it's an offence for the passengers to drink it.

You can read Gulf News' report here.

Marina fire?

Lunchtime today in Dubai Marina and I drove past this:



It looked like another construction site fire to me.

Beach development

Time to update a post I did six months ago on the new development adjoining Umm Suqeim Fishing Port, off the beach next to Burj Al Arab.

It's a replacement for the massive development that was planned, for which the beach was fenced off - until The Big Boss stepped in and stopped it.

The substitute development is called a tiered island, although it's really a new spit of land being created adjoining the beach. It will have 45 villas on it apparently.

Today it looks like this: