As Cairo careens towards total gridlock, officials searchfor a solution.
By Jessica Gray
It is 3pm on Talaat Harb Street in Downtown Cairo and traffic is at a crawl. Bumper to bumper, old jalopies and overpriced SUVs jostle for every extra inch of headway. When there is no headway left to make, drivers lean on their horns in frustration, the piercing beeeeeeeeeep! egging others to do the same.
The crowded streets and earsplitting honks are nothing new to veteran taxi driver Ayman Ibrahim. Leaning back in his old black-and-white taxi, Ibrahim says he’s used to sitting around idle as he ferries passengers throughout the city.
“For every eight-hour shift, I spend four hours sitting in traffic,” he says with a shrug, adding that things have gotten significantly worse since he began driving a taxi 10 years ago, a sentiment shared by many Egyptians.
Things have gotten so bad that city planners recently predicted the average speed in greater Cairo will slow to a paltry 11 km per hour within five years if nothing is done to ease congestion. (It should be noted that some of the commuters Business Today spoke with were surprised that wasn’t already the case.)
Always a hot topic, President Hosni Mubarak cast the issue of gridlock into the limelight last month by meeting twice with ministers to discuss road-building projects. Those included the Safft El-Laban corridor, scheduled to open this summer, which would link Tharnat Bridge near Cairo University with the Ring Road. Also on the agenda was an effort to connect high-traffic streets with expressways, Al-Masry Al-Youm reported. City planners and the governor of Cairo also convened in May to discuss ways to convince drivers to turn to public transport ahead of the near-total standstill that accompanies Ramadan.
Experts put the blame on ongoing construction, a lack of public transportation and the significant number of new cars being licensed each year.
Ironically, while there are several infrastructure projects designed to ease congestion in the works, many are behind schedule and contributing to the nation’s traffic woes.
The third metro line is a prime example. Supposed to connect Cairo’s Downtown with the airport, the line’s construction is months behind schedule, with its completion set for 2017, yet another headache for drivers already being re-routed around construction clogging roadways in Abassiya and Ataba.
“If my working day is eight hours, it becomes 12 when you factor in traffic,” says pharmacist Metwally Abdel Aziz.
The government’s plan to put an end to the seemingly endless congestion includes building a 26,000-square-meter underground garage in Tahrir Square set to open in 2011, sectioning off bits of Downtown as pedestrian-only zones, digging another tunnel and making more ministry services available by phone or online.
But drivers are not sold on the ideas.
A 2009 survey by the Information Decision Support Center, a think-tank funded by Parliament, shows that people believe traffic is getting worse. More than three-quarters of respondents said they struggle with traffic jams on a daily basis, with the same number claiming the gridlock was harmful to their health. They ranked the Giza governorate as the worst traffic offender, with Cairo, Qalyoubeya in Upper Egypt and Alexandria following close behind. (The worst time for traffic, according to respondents: From 1pm to 3pm.)
Cairo officials say they are doing their best to improve the situation by investing in public transport. In April, the first of 1,500 modern public buses, each with room for 50 passengers, took to the streets. However, urban planners say rolling out the new buses, painted fire-engine red, should only be the tip of the iceberg.
“There are a lot of reasons [for the city’s traffic congestion] but I think the biggest one is that there is a lack of transport,” says Dr Mostafa Madbouly, who spoke to bt over the phone while stuck in traffic. Chairman of the state-run General Organization for Physical Planning, Madbouly says Cairo lacks the resources to move its booming population of 16 million around.
Three million people use the metro every day, despite the fact it only boasts two lines. According to the Organization for Physical Planning, there are 4 km of metro line for every million people in the city. The capital does not compare well to similar-sized cities like Bangkok and Sao Paolo, which average 20 km and 30 km per million citizens respectively.
A fourth metro line is on the drawing board to connect Sixth of October City with Giza’s Pyramid Street and Nasr City. However, the extension’s completion is still years away.
Egypt did not prioritize urban planning and the development of public transport until recent years, which led to both overcrowding and a slapdash transport network. For example, half of the people in the country use private microbuses every day.
One major question is how to convince drivers to give up their air conditioned vehicles. Despite a chronic lack of parking in city centers, suburban car owners are reticent to join the public transit crowd, even with the advent of new buses. Most say they are resigned to the traffic and plan for it when they step into their vehicle, sometimes leaving two hours early in the hopes of being on time.
“I would never consider taking public transit,” says Ain Shams’ Aly Mohamed, even though he admits spending a great deal of time in often fruitless searches for parking spots.
The growing number of new vehicles on the streets add to the congestion as well. In 2009, 150,000 new cars were registered in Cairo alone. Commuters along Cairo’s Ring Road, Autostrade and Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road are also feeling the pinch as settlements in Sixth of October City and New Cairo continue to expand. This trend is being actively promoted by officials as part of the Cairo 2050 plan that is slated to rejuvenate the Downtown area for businesses, while luring residents to outlying communities currently under construction.
Dr. Martin Fleming, vice president of corporate strategy at IBM, says a metropolis like Cairo shouldn’t have to wait four decades to see results. By collecting tolls on high-traffic roads, issuing a universal public transport pass, warning drivers about jams and publicizing metro, train and bus schedules, cities can dramatically cut down on congestion.
“There needs to be a plan and broad approach. There is no magic solution or silver bullet that can be effective in the absence of having a plan. Egypt is among the fastest-growing countries in the world. That growth needs to be accompanied by the expansion of the business and commercial infrastructure to allow the future growth to continue at the same impressive rate,” says Fleming.
Fleming says all these tactics, alone or working together, could benefit Egypt as long as authorities set out clear goals, something drivers say they don’t expect to see in the near future. bt
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