Traffic frustration
Dear Sir,
I know that I am not the only resident of Doha to find the traffic a misery that we are forced to endure every day. But having said that and in accepting the unfortunate inevitability of the current situation whilst the new road and metro systems are being constructed to quite literally transport Qatar into the next decade and beyond, I have to ask why it is that the driving habits of so many of our co-road users exacerbate the problem.
Why, may I ask, do so many of the road users choose to drive in the middle lane of a three-lane highway and then to travel at 60kmph? Simple common sense surely demands that if you are going to travel at that speed that you should use the far-right lane and thereby leave the other two lanes for traffic that choose to travel at a faster speed as allowed by the relevant speed limits. This simple courtesy would ease the traffic jams by a substantial margin.
The necessity for other vehicles to swerve either side of the slow-moving road block would be removed and the road safety would enjoy a significant increase. There are many other issues connected with bad driving that could be raised but the simple correction of this bad habit makes it a good place to start with.
Can we try it please?
Andrew Robertson. (e-mail address supplied)
Indisciplined motorists
Dear Sir,
I work with a private company and am a regular traveller from Matar Kadeem to Sidra Hospital in Al Gharaffa in the company’s 30-seater bus. I have been in Qatar since 2009.
Of late, the travel from LuLu Hypermarket to the Immigration Roundabout is extremely tiresome and irritating because of acute traffic congestion.
A normal travelling time of 20 minutes takes more than 90 minutes these days as vehicles move inch by inch.
This is definitely due to the commuters’ indisciplined way of driving – many motorists use the fourth track which is allotted for emergency vehicles and then often jump over to the third track which disturbs the vehicles already on it. Ultimately, by the time we reach our office we are exhausted.
It’s high time the Traffic Department found a way to ease congestion on this road. My suggestion is to deploy police in four or five points on the road to put brakes on indisciplined driving by commuters during the peak hours at least, from 6am to 9am and from 5pm to 7pm.
D K Subramanien (Address supplied)
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