Even though, Cairo is considered as a largest city in Africa, it also expected that the traffic will be major issue to deal with. There are at least 18 million people live in Cairo in addition of 3500 newborns added to this number each day. Logically it’s not all 18 million people have car but the nature of streets are clogged because of the traffic (stop- go). It’s difficult to discern any particular rules of the road because there are many streets are one way not always this rule is working. It’s known that red light mean “stop” or “slowdown” and green light “walk” light mean it’s safe to cross the road, but it’s not necessarily to believe in that, the drivers are increasing the speed to get through red traffic light with horns blaring to stop anyone who might consider getting in their way. Sometimes they are driving over the pavements; the only thing that forces the driver to stop is no possible way to squeeze around.
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Even though Egypt have a despite schemes of modernization in many parts of Cairo, donkey-carts are still a prominent feature in many streets and they manage their way through traffic with their own system but what an incredible thing is many cars do the same, in addition they use the lane of oncoming traffic when their own lane are full.
“Traffic in Cairo is absolutely chaotic. If you are ever tempted to drive in Egypt, take a rest until you get over it,” said Mohamed Abdel-Hamid, manager of an international bank in Egypt, who suffers the daily commute from Heliopolis to 6th of October City and have a real vision about the traffic jam and the accident that occur every five minutes, which make us believe that even the chaos has its own rules.
As Abdel-Hamid said: “lane markers on the road are merely suggestions, and traffic signals are only an opinion,” we can notice that the driver is driving like madmen, he is free to drive down the middle between two lanes of traffic, honking his horn expecting from the cars parallel to his on each side to make a room if possible. “This is not considered rude or in any way out of the place,” Abdel-Hamid says with irony. “Traffic was not that bad few years ago. Nobody respects traffic regulations now; everybody simply goes his own way. It takes hours and hours to go anywhere. Streets are blocked all the time, day and night, especially on 6th of October Bridge -it is crazy to drive on the bridge nowadays,” added Abdel-Hamid.
More than 7000 people per year have been killed and wound nearly 35,000 causes of road fatalities as experts mentioned, so will we reach to limit the number of vehicles. It’s obviously now that Cairo is crumbling under the twin pressure of traffic and population.
According to Mohamed Mursi Mansour, director of Public Traffic Authority of Giza Governorate, new initiatives to address the traffic congestion in Egypt and the issues surrounding road safety are now active in General Authority for Roads and Bridges. “Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent on upgrading the safety and efficiency of the existing infrastructure in the short term, while mid- and long-term goals focus on increasing the width of roads,” said Mansour.
With refer to World Bank estimation of an urbanization level of 70% by year 2020. The most issues that are facing Egypt in urban transport are congestion, high reliance on road transport and traffic safety. Cairo experience show that the average speeds of traffic is less than 10 Km/hr. which keep in falling down with the increasing in the number of cars. As mentioned in World Bank report, dependence on public transportation is less than 65%.
Abdel-Rahman sherif, head of South-Central Cairo Administration for General Transport, believes that the right solution is to develop an efficient public transportation system, such as the underground metro, also encourage people to use it, to reduce the number of private vehicles. “A committee of traffic specialist and engineers should be formed to study the problem and draft a comprehensive master plan. I believe that Cairo is in dire need of better planning if traffic is to be streamlined,” states sherif.
Let’s take a Dukki region as case in point, which was originally planned as a neighborhood of villas and boulevards. Owners of most villas in the district randomly expanded into more profitable high-rise apartment blocks. The streets and sewage system, however, could not cope with the resultant increase in the number of inhabitants, especially since few of these apartment buildings included garages. Planners, Sherif adds, had to expand the streets at the expense of pedestrian pavements – a “big mistake”, in his opinion. “Expanding streets and adding more fly-overs and tunnels is not always the solution to traffic congestion,” Sherif argues. Rather, these measures encourage the influx of more vehicles into already congested areas.
Nowadays, traffic in Cairo should be seen to be believed. It’s more than like elemental force than a movement of cars. Absolutely there is many several forces contributed to traffic jam, these factor should be taken seriously and diagnosed before solution will be out of control. With refer to Atef Abdel-Ghani Fayad, whose working as general director of roads, he mentioned to the factors which might be considered as causes of traffic congestion: the population explosion, high frequency of daily trips by motorists, and urban and economic development. He also explained the need of efficient public transportation system and more qualified network of road and rails ways. That’s because the motorists make three trips daily in Greater Cairo as an average, with addition of population growth rate, its high at 2.4%: “this means that we have an increase of nearly one million people every year.”
It’s useless to lunch a project without studying the consequences adequately, like building bridges at Lebanon square in AL-Mohandissin, also Fayad was talking about this issue and he said: “This area was originally planned for residential purposes, but now it is main cause of traffic congestion.” The solutions we asked for should not be traditional, according to Fayad; we should study every small particular thing and take it seriously before we do it, also we have to get a drawing plan to study the network road, also we need to study the number and directions of daily trips made by motorists and commuters, after that we can tell and build the number of car parks needed. “By increasing people awareness of traffic regulation and urging them to use public transportation are necessary, through efficient public transportation, and road maintenance.”
As mentioned by Director-General of Transportation at Ministry of Interior, Essameddin Asfour, there is a comprehensive plan on the table as to how to streamline traffic. “people must be patient; when the completion of construction work of the bridge located in Lebanon Square as well as Al-Remayah Square comes to an end, this will alleviate much of pressure,” as Asfour said.
Asfour added: “the ministry has also formed a committee of senior policemen whose task is to keep the congestion traffic areas clean,” this problem is not only hard sometimes to solve by ministry but it also hard sometimes to be solved by experts and specialists in addition this case of problem is not the responsibility of Ministry of Interior alone, because the solutions can also be found by using information and communication technologies (ICTs). “To the unexpected of many that technological solutions and applications can definitely put an end for this problem through a good use of database and instant information. Specialists and those are responsible about this problem should work together to find an outline for the path down which ICTs and transport can productively merge,” adds asfour.
Mohamed Abdel-Atti, an eminent transport expert, explains how ICTs will give a big help in traffic monitoring, especially monitoring traffic jams, like building up a powerful database capable of predicting bottlenecks and accident before they happen. Abdel atti explains that brining foreign technologies into Egypt market is not always good, so we should make our best out of them and adapting them to local needs and conditions.
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On the other side we should find a dire solution to secure the passage of pedestrians. The city streets are not organized; it’s difficult to cross the street. Its normal to cross one lane when that’s all you can cross, then stand in the middle of torrent of whizzing cars waiting for the next opening. “Death is inevitable,” says Fayad sarcastically. The engineers and the worker on the site are always focus on traffic problems without taking in calculation that people and not cars are making the city as it is, also pedestrians go nearly always unconsidered. Fayad adds: “cars are moving over pavements, which are no longer safe, and pedestrians have been forced into the center of the street, since becoming the main victims of traffic problems.”
To insure the safety to pedestrians passage, it was announced lately that there exists plan to build pedestrian tunnel all over Cairo, equipped with escalators. The first action is expected to start building the pedestrian tunnel in front of Cairo University in Giza. An equivalent tunnel already exists below Salah Salem Street in front of the Cairo Trade Fair grounds. “Two other tunnels will be built in the areas of Abbasiya and Fustat,” says Fayad. Officials wishes that after developing an efficient public transportation system, “traffic will be streamlined and pedestrians will be able to walk and cross streets safely,” Fayad added.
Prime minister, Dr. Ahmed Nazif, has checked how is going the first project of public transportation in Greater Cairo which aims to include 200 buses as a first step. This project aims to release around 1100 buses through the three coming years, starting from this year also there will be 300 buses added to the 200 before the end of this year.
The plan of this project is to provide 300 buses annually over the coming two years.
The project also includes plans to develop the human resources for the workers and employees in Cairo Transportation Authority (CTA), as well as setting training program for administrative employees and drivers.
Prime minister, Dr. Ahmed Nazif after he checked the first action of the project confirmed that Cairo is one of the biggest and largest city in the world with high population that normally cause a traffic congestion; however the government still fighting against the twin pressure which coming from traffic jam and high population. The government has decided to solve and work on this problem on two phases. Reduce the population through build new cities and improving squatters. “There is a project exists and its aim is to get rid of kiosks to be implemented by the squatter’s development fund,” Dr. Ahmed Nazif mentioned. The second phase with help of Cairo Transportation Authority (CTA) Š development and improvement is aiming to solve citizen daily surfing in Cairo traffic congestion, also encourage the people to use a public transportation instead of their own private cars.
Dr. Ahmed Nazif keep the doors open for the private companies to participate in the mentioned project by including 1500 new air-conditioned buses by coming period, something which might encourage private cars owners to use special buses instead of their owns.
Cairo is designed to home around 4 million drivers, but according to recent statistics confirmed that Cairo home 17 million at least, which obviously this huge difference will cause what called “congestion” and “high population”. According to this most Egyptians are waking-up on the noise of not duke but noise of horns, also they have the same routine at every morning at 8 am, the rushing torrent of buses, and once again at 5pm, passengers are getting in and out of the NON-STOP public transports while it keep in motion.
In September 2008, the government takes an action against the new arrivals of new 120,000 vehicles to the Greater Cairo Streets, which was as mentioned by Abdel Azim Wazir, Cairo Governor: the Government has locate a space area outside the heart of the capital of Egypt, and the Government offices and ministries will be removed and rebuild it there, also it will stop build any more schools, universities or even government offices inside Cairo.
After taking many opinions and comments also a recommendations from many responsible men and authorities, most of them are getting head-ace and confusing from this problem. But as view as traffic experts, they have another point view which is about the driving habits specially from what it calls “microbus”, most of Egyptians are using these kind of transportation with ignoring how bad the driver while he is driving holding horn all over the rout causing noise pollution and it’s not only this ,but also he doesn’t respect the rules of the traffic even the respect of humidity. Microbus drivers are not wages by hours, but they wages by the number of daily trips the can do. So, they are throwing themselves in troubles with policemen also with most dangerous accident, that causes a high traffic congestions, also it need more than three hours to be solved. “Because the government are not mentioned to the new traffic laws, that’s why the drivers are keep ignoring the traffic signs,” as Rehab Mahmoud said, a freelance business trainer.
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