CAIRO - 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.” He also referred to the limited budget allocated for creating and maintaining bridges and roads that have become incapable of absorbing any increase of vehicles, which threaten the collapse of some old bridges. Professor of urban planning Mohamed Abdel-Baki opines that the largest problem facing Cairo is the spread of shanty towns with the resultant conflict in public means of transport and private, such as the micro-buses, and negative impact on the potential carrying capacity of the roads. “The only hope in resolving the traffic problem lies in good planning of the new cities to attract people to move to them,” states Dr Abdel-Baki. He admits that there were some fundamental faults in the design of some bridges and tunnels such as Sayeda Aisha Bridge and Al-Azhar Tunnel, both of which he believes should have been much wider. Dr Abdel-Baki agrees with Dr Sarhan on the necessity of carrying out periodical maintenance to all brides, highways and roads to reduce road accidents. The former chairman of the Road and Bridges Authority Fouad Abdel-Aziz has spoken about the unjustified delay in implementing some significant projects that could have introduced radical solutions to the traffic crisis, while their delay has complicated the condition. Abdel-Aziz referred to the 1989 Japanese suggestion to extend four lines of the capital's underground metro to lessen traffic jam on the roads. “However the procrastination in effecting this project caused further complications and we are still working on creating the third line until now.” The growing population and the expected rise of private cars on the roads, due to the anticipated economic progress, could mean a state of paralysis on the roads of Cairo if a collective solution is not immediately found to resolve this crisis.
