Al-Watan

THE Traffic Department in Jeddah is failing to manage traffic on our roads. Our roads are chaotic. Take a look at our streets and you see nothing but chaos. As a road user, you need to be very patient to deal with the situation.

Amir Majed Road, Makrouna Road, Madinah Road and King Abdulaziz Road all have branch roads. There are concrete blocks obstructing most of the exits on to the branch roads, something that exasperates the congestion and traffic jams. Why are the exits closed? Nobody knows except the Director of Traffic in Jeddah and some of his aides.

I have asked many traffic officers why the exits are blocked all the time and all of them said they did not know and that they had been ordered to block the exits. Senior traffic officers are nowhere to be seen on roads although their work requires them to supervise traffic.

If you were to go to the headquarters of the Traffic Department in Jeddah or any other city, you will see low-rank officers issuing licenses, vehicle repair permits, etc. Where are the senior officers? Why are they hiding in their offices? Do they only read newspapers and watch videos on their mobile phones? They are not present on our roads and, most probably, do little work in their offices. What is it that they exactly do? Can we consider them to be unproductive? As far as I am concerned, they are useless.

At almost each u-turn on King Abdulaziz Road, there is a police vehicle with an officer inside doing nothing apart from checking his mobile phone. Some of the officers place their feet on their dashboards to make themselves comfortable. They are totally focused on their phones while the traffic outside is completely chaotic. These officers do not care. Anyone who bothers them or distracts them, risks being fined or given a ticket.

Traffic on the Al-Haramain Highway is slow all the time. Speed cameras are everywhere to catch drivers who exceed the speed limit. However, if you, God forbid, were to have a traffic accident, then you would have to wait for hours before a traffic officer arrives on the scene.

Some traffic officers are busy with other pursuits. They scour neighborhoods and issue tickets to cars that are double-parked; this, in my view, is unfair. Most people in many of the city’s neighborhoods end up double-parking because of a lack of parking space. Where are they supposed to park their cars? If someone lives in a six-story building without ample parking space, where is he expected to park his car? Should he park on Makkah Road at the place where impounded cars are stored or should he rent a forklift to lift the car on to the roof of his building? He could even possibly get rid of his car and ask the traffic police for lifts.

It is not fair to give cars that are double-parked tickets and blame them for the mistakes of the municipality. After all, it is the municipality that is responsible for issuing construction licenses to buildings that do not have ample parking space. Do the traffic officers know this or are they only bothered about issuing tickets?

I would like to ask the Director of the Traffic in Jeddah whether it is fair to give people tickets when there is no parking space available in a neighborhood? What is your justification for this? I hope the director orders for the concrete blocks to be removed from exits and put a stop in issuing double-parking tickets in neighborhoods.