Road to nowhere

The the Emirates evening post (don't look for a link as this pitiful rag doesn't manage to run a site)
today runs a story dealing with the just announced plans for widening the Dubai Sharjah highway.

700 million buys a bit of a wider road and some new intersections. Oh and two years of hell as they do the work..

The result of this claims the municipality is a reduction of 58%!!!!!!!

They don't state if this is 58% less time or if the traffic density is reduced by 42%?

Either way it is total bollocks, much of the congestion does not originate on the road but at either end of it and that's before you add in the inevitable accidents and rubberneckers, so unless you do something about downtown Diera much of that congestion still is there, only now people get to it a little faster.

The other massive flaw to this is that there is a huge pent up demand in Dubai that would would move to sharjah tomorrow to escape the clutches of the Dubai landlords if the commute was even semi bearable. This of course ensures any spare capacity is rapidly filled and we just end up worse than ever, judging by how quickly this has happened elsewhere here, I give it 6 months.

Besides by the time they have built it the population will have probably gone up by at least 20%.

Perhaps a better idea might have been to build a tramway or light railway that can carry real numbers of people on this route or even add an extend to the Metro?

Appreciate when you cross boundaries there are always issues but this does work to the advantage of both Emirates, Sharjah get thousands of people renting their houses and spending money in their shops and Dubai gets to keep access to cheaper labour accommodation.

Either way a wider road isn't going to cut it I'm afraid.