The Middle Way

Image via WikipediaThere's some interesting localised chaos breaking out in Sharjah as people start to get used to the new 'middle road' which starts by the Mahatta Fort museum and snakes out to cross the Emirates Road and then merge with the Mileiha Road. The problem is that this merging takes place not with a nice, sensible clover-leaf exchange but with a traffic light. The volume of traffic skipping out of the central city on its way to the E611 Dubai Bypass (the only truly clear route into Dubai of a morning) is increasing exponentially daily.

The accidents are starting to pile up quite nicely. The access to the 'schools area' from the Middle Road is already creating a daily tailback of quite alarming proportions. And the traffic merging into the Mileiha Road does so just outside the gates of Sharjah English School. Adding to this growing chaos, Sharjah's elite Anjad police force have started to pitch up and muck around with various experiments to see what can be done to improve things. This means you never quite know which route to take as U-turns are blocked, roads diverted and sundry other manifestations of Anjaddery take place.

What could be nicer than to surround a busy little school with snarling, choking throngs of heavy, aggressive commuter traffic? When you add the earth-movers, heavy lorries and bulk carriers escaping from Sharjah's industrial areas, the chaos only grows. At least we can take some comfort that the whole road network, including this little piece of madness, wasn't planned and built by a world class and highly respected British consultancy and construction company that should, surely, have known better than to join two arterial roads with a traffic light outside a school.

Oh...