Salik delivers a smaller Dubai

Salik has been operational for barely three weeks and already something remarkable is happening - people are beginning to like it.

While ArabianBusiness.com's comment section is full of complaints about the logic of a 24-hour system, and its entry and exit points, the number of people who are praising the ease that traffic can now get from one side of Dubai to the other is on the rise.

One comment that has stuck is that the toll system has brought with it a shadow of the old Dubai. While a congestion charge may not sound exactly like the emirate of the past, what is reminiscent is the ability to get from one side of the city to the other with relative ease.

Dubai has become smaller.

Geographically Dubai is not a big city and yet the heavy traffic congestion makes it feel like one. A few years ago, travelling from one side of the town to the other was not an issue. Today a 30km journey can take two hours.

As traffic increased, so invisible barriers all over Dubai have sprung up as people have sought to avoid the congestion. People in the Springs, stay in the Springs; inhabitants of the Marina venture as far as Media City, but Deira? Forget it. And frankly, given 40 minute queues to get over the creek, who can blame them?

As a result the city has fragmented, with islands of inhabitants isolated by congested lines of cars. As a business and social community, the city has suffered as a result.

For those willing to pay, the tolls have brought back that priceless commodity - a free road from one side of the city to the other. 

Of course tolls are a temporary solution, and Newton's third law applies - for every action there is an equal and opposite force reaction. More specifically for every person who feels pleasure at the new high-speed highway, someone else stuck on Maktoum Bridge is paying for it with longer queues.

The city is continuing to grow and as our readers rightly point out, charging for the use of a road can only be one part of a much larger cure to make Dubai a more comfortable city in which to live and do business in again.

The fleet of 80 new buses the RTA is introducing, the 300-metre long, six-lane floating bridge that has already opened, and Dubai's new waterbus service are all part of that solution.

However it is the metro - parts of which are set to go live next year - that will enable Dubai once again to truly shrink to the more comfortable, livable, breathable city long-term residents remember it once was.

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