27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001
Issue No.553
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001 Issue No.553 |
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New traffic woes
Last Friday, motorists in the city centre were taken by surprise: 26th of July Street, a main artery for Cairo, had become a one-way street, reports Gihan Shahine. The thoroughfare was restricted to vehicles coming from Opera Square, with the right lane of the new one-way dual-carriage-way feeding into Ramses street, and the left lane going only so far as Sherif street.
Twenty-four hours later, the results were not impressive. Although Saturday was the weekend for schools, banks and the Stock Exchange, long queues of bumper-to-bumper traffic quickly clogged the already-congested downtown streets, as motorists were caught unawares by the new route.
The Cairo governorate had, in fact, announced that, alongside the launch of Al-Azhar tunnel, the city would be treated to a new traffic plan, which aims to ease city congestion. But most people were kept in the dark about the details of the plan and its timing, leading to the delays of last week.
The route change is part of a broader plan for streamlining traffic in the city centre that includes earmarking routes for large vehicles, widening streets by removing run-down buildings, making some streets one-way, constructing a multi-level car park and building two tunnels for pedestrians.
But there are worries that the fledgeling plan has aggravated the defects of an already complex situation.
"No one can judge from the first days of any experiment," argues Refqi El-Qadi, head of the Cairo Traffic Engineering Department. "It is not unusual to have traffic jams on the first days of a new traffic plan because people take time to adjust to alternative routes. The same happened when Al-Qasr Al-Aini Street was turned into a one-way route, but now the idea has proved a success."
El-Qadi added that the route change on 26th of July Street led many people mistakenly to think that the Al-Azhar Tunnel had opened and they headed to the area to find out.
"That explains why the city centre was abnormally clogged on a week-end," El-Qadi explained. "But that will not be the case in the coming days. Experts from the governorate and traffic officers are there all the time to monitor traffic," he added.
Many urban planners are sceptical. Some experts insist that the new plan is no more than a piecemeal solution that, in the absence of a comprehensive master plan for greater Cairo, is likely to gridlock other spots.
The traffic plan is designed primarily to streamline traffic in the city centre, once the Al-Azhar tunnel is opened and the Al-Azhar fly-over, perceived as an eye-sore, is dismantled.
As of tomorrow, the Al-Azhar tunnel will open to traffic as an experiment for specific periods. That may provide the answer as to whether Cairo's snarled traffic is about to get better, or worse.
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