I know I’ve said this before but traffic in Bahrain is a nightmare. Every month there are more and more cars on the road.
The dealers are selling thousands of cars a month and have been doing so for at least the last 30 years. Think about this. If they sell just 2,000 cars a month, and I think that’s a low guesstimate, then in the last 30 years 720,000 new cars have appeared. That’s one car for each man, woman and child in Bahrain, including the hundreds of thousands of labourers who can’t drive or afford to run even a wreck. How many cars have been wrecked or scrapped during that period? Well not that many. Wrecked? Well not really because although there are plenty of accidents, no one can get up to any real speed to cause a wreck. A quick trip to ‘We Do Denting’ and they are back on the road. Scrapped? Well not really because the quality of cars has increased amazingly over the last 30 years, and so vehicles that once would only last 10 years or 150,000km are now easily lasting 20 years and well over 300,000km.
There are just too many of them. I work at home so do not normally experience the horrors of rush hour, trying to get into and out of Manama. When I do need to go I usually do so at a time when it’s supposed to be quieter, like halfway through the morning or mid-afternoon. But recently I have noticed that the highways are choked up even during these times. 7.30 at night used to be a quiet time to go anywhere as most were home from work and having dinner. But the other night as I was heading down Dry Dock Highway there were literally hundreds of cars both going towards Hidd Bridge and coming off it. Where were they all going at that time of night? I have been stuck in a queue over one kilometre long for 20 minutes just trying to get out of Amwaj at 1.00am in the morning! It seems that if the roads are too jammed for people to drive during the day, they take their turn going out for a drive at night.
Solutions? I am not sure there are any. As long as people insist on having their own car and can afford it, then more and more will appear. If we cannot stop people having cars, can we remove their need to go to places? If employers were to consider allowing more of their staff to work from home, perhaps we could ease rush hours. There are two obvious solutions. One is to construct a proper urban transport system such as the Dubai Metro. But can little Bahrain afford that? Maybe the question is can little Bahrain afford not to do that and eventually come to a standstill in an island-wide gridlock?
The other solution would be to make motoring so expensive that it prices thousands off the roads; I can hear the MP’s screaming from here.
A sensible first move would be to put a huge sales tax on new cars and stop them from being so affordable. This would generate revenue for the government and slow down the rate of new cars on the road. Exceptions could be made for taxis, minibuses and electric cars, which although still causing congestion will not at least contribute to pollution.