I have posted a number of times about the sandy snicket that affords relief to intrepid 4WD-owning commuters bypassing the Sharjah-Dubai traffic. Here, for instance. Or here, here and this memorable moment here on the day I caught one of the employees of Dubai's beloved traffic regulator, the RTA (Road and Transport Authority), who regularly use the snicket to escape the chaos they are at least morally partially responsible for.
And then they started to try and block it. Quite who 'they' are remains a mystery. The increasingly insane attempts to block the short cut have meant that this small stretch of inter-Emirate sand is now littered with concrete blocks, barriers, quite extensive sandy berms, trenches and a constant flow of people insisting on crossing anyway. We're a hard lot to stop when we've got an alternative to sitting on the road for 2 hours jostling with every other poor sod on his way to work. (My other alternatives are, BTW, move to Dubai or ship out. I'm not doing the National Paints Shuffle or the Ettihad Road car park every day. No way.)
It's been quite fun, in its way. Seeing the new set of obstacles every night and then finding a way around them really does mix a little fun, a smidgen of winding down after the day adventure and perhaps even a splash of eff-you rebellion.
But it's getting beyond a joke now - the entire stretch is so built-up, blocked off and messed around that people are really damaging their cars trying to get through. The sand's soft, the driving's technical and 9/10 of the border rats are getting stuck. As of today, with the addition of a new set of barriers and impediments, there are only two possible ways through and both are 'difficult' drives.
And I am damned if I will let them win. Whoever 'they' are.
Damned.
7 comments:
Love your commitment LOL.
Mad.
it's rather fun to see RTA block most shortcuts that save people from being stuck on jammed roads. even in the city. instead of taking a u-turn or left turn straight to where i need go, the idiots block those turns and make me go atleast thrice the way down the road and then take a damn u-turn.
It fills me with wonder how some new improvement saves three minutes on the average journey time from A to B. And then banning a left turn or closing a U-turn means everyone adds ten minutes to their journeys by having to go all the way to the roundabout to come back again.
If am not mistaken, about 8 to 10 years back. that piece of land had a highway between SHJ & DXB - subsequently the highway was blocked off at the entrance (from SHJ). A rumour has it, the highway led to a local community, close to Mamzar with local homes, which certainly affected lives of folks who weren't happy to have a highway come into their neighbourhood.
Nah, Rosh. That's the other side of town - and yes, there was a 'spur' road from Ettihad that went through Mamzar that was subsequently blocked off from the main Ettihad feed.
The snicket is on the desert side of town, just past Mirdif.
Oh. Should I have kept that to myself???
It's just another part of our beloved RTA's stated aim of stopping us from using our cars.
Post a Comment