Traffic Jam in Sharjah: The Problem And How to DealAhmed Fahmi Hussain Ba FadhlU15105080Sharjah University Table of ContentsCover Page 1Table of Contents 2Abstract3Introduction 4Sharjah Traffic Jam reasons and solutions 5-10Increase in Number of Cars 5Lack of Proper Infrastructure 5Alternate Routes 6Employers Are Part of The Traffic Jam 6Lack of Public Transport 7Unstudied Street Exit 7Moving to The Big Cities 8Biggest Industrial Area in the middle east8Housewares stores 9Foggy Days Congestion 9Roundabouts 10Bad Behavior While Driving 10Aggressive and timid drivers 11Conclusion 12Reference 13AbstractTraffic jam has been one of the major issues that biggest cities are facing in spite of measures being taken to mitigate and reduce it. In the recent past, traffic congestion has emerged as one of the main challenge for engineers, planners and policy makers in urban areas. Modern social and economic structures, shaped by car-oriented urban development and rapid growth in vehicle ownership, have established congestion as an inescapable reality of urban life. The growing impact of congestion is seen in terms of deteriorating urban air quality besides other adverse effects on quality of urban living, there is many different reasons which cases traffic jam and every reason of them has a unique solution that only works with it,IntroductionCities like Dubai and Sharjah have to deal with thousands of cars running through their streets daily.
Traffic congestion is a big problem for everyone within the city. The main reasons why traffic congestion occurs are more cars, poor road management, poor practices on behalf of employers, and unstudied well street ext.Increase in Number of CarsThe main reasons why there’s more congestion is due to more cars on the road. The adult population is increasing, therefore more people want their own personal transport to get around with and most of the people has more than one car so do some families hires a driver for their kids. As the number of cars increase the chance of congestion also increases. It’s why in smaller towns and villages like Al Dhaid, and Al Madam congestion is almost unheard of. To solve this issue government needs to reduce the number of the cars owned by one family or by the person, and more than that the government should increase the number of public transportation and it should encourage people to use public transportation by different kind of ways like a prize every couple months for example like giving some families free ticks because they used the metro more than 10 times, that’s one kind of the prizes that was easy to come up with and its easy to figure up different types of prizes that will encourage and motivate people to use the public transportations in Sharjah.Lack of Proper InfrastructureOne of the other reasons is lack of proper infrastructure.
Councils and national governments fail to act on the looming threat of heavy congestion until it happens. The city (Sharjah) doesn’t expand along with an increasingly car reliant population. A single street with a lane on each side before might not suffice in ten years after the population has increased. Authorities often fail to convert this into a dual carriageway. Alternate routes are also a problem. Cities have limited capacity to expand due to poor funding and planning restrictions preventing building on green belt spaces (Prosopis cineraria (Ghaf)). Sharjah Directorate of Town Planning and Survey are forced to work with the routes they already have.
If they can’t increase the number of lanes it leads to congestion. The way to solve this problem is by planning for the future and put assumptions that the number of cars will increase a-lot in the coming years, and the authorities should consider that the old roads wont fit the coming years because the old roads was build to fit the year it was built in without considering the coming years, more than that authorities should start building roads that will replace the main roads and start to fix the main roads to contain this issue, and reduce the traffic by increasing the number of the main roads so the traffic will divide on the deferent main roads.Alternate RoutesAlternate routes are also a problem. Cities have limited capacity to expand due to poor funding and planning restrictions preventing building on green belt spaces. Cities are forced to work with the routes they already have.
If they can’t increase the number of lanes it leads to congestion. So the solution of this problem is to increase the number of lanes, but that’s not everything they should also move the green belt spaces to other place that will be the best place for the green belt so it won’t effect the traffic motion in the future.Employers Are Part of The Traffic JamEmployers can also play a part in dealing with congestion. Congestion almost always happens when people are traveling to and from work. So when Employers choses 8:00AM as the time works start for the employees, everybody is going to move from their houses between 6:00AM and 7:00AM so the main roads will be fully crowded at that time because most of the people will be on their way to the work. By adhering to the traditional 8-5 routines, there’s a greater chance of congestion.
Everyone has to travel to and from work at the same time each day. The Employers should convert the traditional work hour system to the modern system that will let the work hour be more flexible, so the employees will be able to attend at the time that suits them and will leave when they finish their work hour so that way will decrease the traffic jam not just at the peak hours but it will decrease ion the hole day, and it would help employees to mange their time more than they ever did before.Lack of Public TransportA lack of public transport, or poor public transport options, will also cause problems. If there isn’t enough buses, trams, or local trains people are forced to take their cars to work.
The ratio of passengers to vehicles decreases, whereas if they were able to take the bus or metros or trains, people would feel less of a need to drive their cars. If Road and Transport Authority aims to shift trips away from cars, then attractive alternatives are required. Cycling and walking may be appropriate for the shorter distances, but transferring longer trips requires that a good quality public transport system is in place to ensure that the city can function efficiently. This means that Fares need to be low enough for poor people to be able to afford them, there must be sufficient vehicles for a frequent service to be run throughout the day, routes must reflect the dominant desire lines of the travelling public and there should be extensive spatial coverage of the city so that no one is very far from a public transport stop, speeds of buses need to be raised relative to cars by freeing them from congestion, It is not enough to provide public transport: it also has to be coordinated. Multi-modal tickets may be one essential ingredient of a functional urban transport system, but the key item is the integration of services by the provision of connections between modes.Unstudied Street ExitUnstudied street Exit may cause a lot of problems and different types of traffic hazards such as accidents, traffic jams and unclearly road lines. The street exit is one of the main reasons of traffic, it might stop the main roads and start a huge traffic that will effect the other roads that connect with the main road and by that work hours traffic starts, and it causes unclear road lines that will make car drivers confused so it might start an accident too, to solve this problem the authority should start separating the main roads from the exits that means that they should put something that will separate the exit road from the main road so who missed the exit road entrance can’t just come and enter from front or other places, so it won’t start a huge traffic that will need hours and hours to finish, but with this simple solution the exit issue will start to decrease, it’s right that some people may be pissed by this solution but it’s the better solution for this issue and there is a lot of benefits of it, so people should start thinking of the benefits of the solution and they will stop binge pissed by it.Moving to The Big CitiesPeople from small towns, villages and countryside like (Al Dhaid and Al Madam) started to move to the big cities (Sharjah) because they will have more job opportunities, availability of services and they will have a decent life and they will feel more like they are in the society.
Governments should start caring more about the small cities by providing more jobs, and availability of services and high quality roads and area, then they should engorge people to invest in the smaller cities and start to build the city up so it can face the surrounding big cities and so the residents won’t start running away and traveling from the city. So this solution will make some people start moving from the big cities to the small cities and that will kind of reduce the traffic in the big cities and will increase happy percentage in the small cities that will make them stay in the small cities and they won’t travel to the big cities.Biggest Industrial Area in The Middle EastSharjah industrial area is one of the biggest and cheapest industrial areas in the middle east, that means that people from different areas and cities so do countries travels to Sharjah industrial area, and that causes a huge traffic jam that effaces the hole area and the city, and that is because the of the place of industrial area, it is in the main entrance of the city and the main exits from the city, and it is near to the neighborhoods areas, because of that it causes a traffic jam in both of the entering roads and the leaving roads, and in the neighborhoods areas, by that you will need at least if you were lucky one hour to reach the end of the traffic jam there.
Government can solve this problem by building new industrial area far from the main roads, far from the entrance and the exits of the city and away from the neighborhoods by that the traffic on the entrance and the exits of the city will decrease so do in the neighborhoods near the industrial area.Housewares storesHousewares stores places causes traffic jam because the biggest an the cheapest Housewares stores in the country are in Sharjah near Al Wahda Street it’s cheapest than Oman Housewares stores too, that’s why you can see a lot of Oman car plates there. Al Wahda Street is one of the main roads in Sharjah and something like the biggest and the cheapest Housewares shop will causes a traffic jam there, for example imagine all of the the country residents that needs furniture or ceramics floors and some of Oman residents cut all of the way to Sharjah to buy some Housewares, sure there will be a huge traffic because of that.
There is two solution to this problems, the first solution is to change the stores locations so it be in a better place away from the main roads and neighborhood areas, and the second solution is to engorge the shops or stores to open new branches in other different places so the people will divide on the new branches that will make the traffic motion better and smoother.Foggy Days Congestion Fog can also be a reason that causes traffic jam. When there is a fog and people start to go to their work or college or to take their kids to school and they can’t see the road because of the fog so being unable to see the road might cause accidents that will start a traffic jam in many different places in the city that will lead to a big traffic jam the whole city, solving this problem is kind of hard but it have many solutions, the first recommend solution is to order cars with front anti-fog camera that’s but cars with this feature will cost more money. The other solution is make flexible work hours at the foggy days so the people won’t be on rush and would drive slower and safer. One of the solutions that was recommended is to send messages to the employees that ” it’s fog out side don’t drive fast and don’t rush to reach your destination safe ” something like that.
Also one of the solutions is to produce more cars with intelligent fog light system same as Mercedes-Benz ; Audi cars.RoundaboutsRoundabouts are also one of the main reasons of traffic in Sharjah, Sharjah is felled with roundabouts every 2 to 4 km you will find a roundabout, what actually happens some of drives are afraid from roundabouts so when they reach one of them they start to get nerves and scared, so they stop and refuse to enter the roundabout sure that thing will start a traffic jam in the street and might causes an accident. The authority in Sharjah start to face this issue by decreasing the numbers of roundabout and replacing them with an intersection of light signals so it makes everything easier for the drivers, but they faced a problem with the big roundabouts like ” Al Kitab Roundabout ” they couldn’t just replace it with an intersection of light signals so they just add a traffic light signals on the roundabout entrance and inside it to reduce the traffic jam and the fear of the drivers.Bad Behavior While DrivingTexting, talking on phone, fixing you head wear (Gatra), and putting makeup, doing these things while driving should be included under traffic jam reasons, because it distracts the driver that will cause deviation from the track that will lead to an accident which will cause a traffic jam.
The police should put strict laws which will deter them and reduce this kind of behaviors.Aggressive and timid driversAggressive and timid drivers cause traffic jams, While the underlying cause of a jam might be an accident, a bottleneck, or drivers simply changing lanes on busy roads, it is how the drivers react in the cars behind that causes traffic to slow to a halt. Researchers say aggressive motorists, who drive too fast and too close to the vehicle in front, or timid motorists, who leave too big a gap, send a “wave of deceleration” backwards down the road until traffic grinds to a stop.
Such behavior leads to the stop-start traffic jams which infuriate motorists. If all the drivers behaved the same way, then traffic would not come to a halt. But the researchers found that in real life situations, the behavior of aggressive and timid drivers led to the slowdown getting worse. The scientists, whose research appears in a special edition of the scientific journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, found that timid drivers had the biggest impact because they “shied away” when the car in front started slowing down, and deliberately started driving even more slowly to increase the gap between them. This then led to cars further behind going more slowly. Aggressive drivers also caused a speed to drop because they braked hard at the last moment to avoid driving into the car in front. They then had to drive more slowly to open up a space again.
This issue is not simple to solve, people that drive Aggressively and timidly should change their driving way and should sign up in some awareness of risky driving programs, and there is other solution is to choose a car that has auto pilot like Tesla and Mercedes and some Toyota cars that can use computers to either take over control from motorists in dangerous situations or are completely robot controlled.ConclusionIn conclusion, congestion is mainly caused by a desire for people to drive their cars coupled with a failure by local government to act. If they invested in more affordable public transport options and a better infrastructure the incidence of congestion would decrease in major cities.ReferenceBull, A. (2004). Traffic congestion: The problem and how to deal with it. Santiago, Chile: United Nations Publications.
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