Egypt traffic crisis demands radical solutions

More than 24,000 road accidents occurred in Egypt in 2010, representing a rise of some 6.9 per cent over the previous year causing death and injury to thousands of people, around half of whom were young.

These fearful figures are liable to rise this year because of the non-introduction of radical solutions to the chronic problem of traffic in Egypt in general and the capital in particular.

When saying ‘radical’, we mean a comprehensive solution that differs from the old tranquillisers previous successive governments prescribed for the problem such as building a bridge here or digging a tunnel there.

“Reaching a radical solution to this dilemma requests getting out of the microscopic studies that concentrate on solving a traffic jam in a certain location to move it to another. For instance, creating a bridge to boost the flow of movement on a certain road to finally cause a traffic jam at its end,” stated Hassan el-Mahdi, an expert of roads and traffic to Sabah el-Kheir magazine.

In his opinion, the solution is to upgrade the public means of transport to make it more attractive to citizens to use instead of the private cars being utilised by more than 20 per cent of Cairenes.

El-Mahdi, a professor of road engineering at Ain Shams University also referred to the problem of the heavy goods transport, noting that around 96 per cent of local commodities are being transported on roads given the lack of river or rail goods transport.

He further pointed out: “These trucks and lorries require particular road specifications to accommodate their huge bulk and heavy cargo. So they shouldn’t be allowed on all roads and their movements should be limited to a special time of the day outside of the rush hours.”

Meanwhile, another professor of road engineering at Ain Shams University, Eissa Sarhan, has suggested that governmental employees leave work at different times to avoid the rush hour. He has also called for two shifts being worked." morning and evening for some governmental departments that offer services to citizens.

Dr Sarhan added: “It could be very effective to widen the use of phone and internet services to convey services and documents to citizens as an ideal way to decrease the crowding in governmental departments and related traffic jam in suburbs in the vicinity of these governmental departments.”