Dubai Traffic On The Increase. Whoopee.

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The car dealers are rubbing their hands, gleefully cackling and singing 'happy days are here again' in their broken, wheezing voices. As miserable a bunch of avaricious hunchbacks as you'll find, the saggy-skinned troglodytes in suits are hearing the sound of tills ringing and they have pronounced the sound To Be Good.

It is within the pages of the mighty Gulf News today we are told that Dubai has increased new vehicle registrations by 10% year on year. That's presumably a sign that we're seeing a 10% increase in vehicles on the road - a total of 1,240,931 vehicles were registered with the RTA this year. Car dealers in Dubai and Sharjah have apparently told the newspaper of increases in new car sales of up to 40% and anticipate a continued strong growth trend.

Even Gulf News made the connection. That means more cars on the road which means more traffic which means more congestion which means more jostling with aggressive dolts in lines of glittering metal blowing out billowing clouds of choking fumes and general bloody misery.

One place there are less cars to be found than last year, incidentally, is the Sharjah/Dubai highway. Although it still gets gummy here and there, the traffic volumes are undoubtedly down as traffic concentrates instead on choking Al Wahda street because everyone's trying to leave at Al Khan and hoy off over to the 311 (The road formerly known as the Emirates Road but now renamed the Mohammed Bin Zayed Road) to avoid shelling out Dhs4. I am constantly amazed at what lengths people will go to in order to save Dhs4 - including spending Dhs5 in extra petrol.

So Salik (the name of Dubai's traffic toll system and Arabic for 'clear') has lived up to its name. Who knew?

The question is whether the expansion of the UAE's road infrastructure will keep pace with the expansion in traffic. There's a new arterial motorway planned to link the 311 down to Abu Dhabi, while a new road system around the Trade Centre Roundabout - started before the bust and now completed by Italian company Salini, which has somehow managed to ride out the recession and its significant exposure to Dubai - is opening this week. The conversion of the National Paints Car Park into a functional road appears to be nearing completion, too - it'll be interesting to see if any number of new lanes can bring clarity to what was the UAE's most notorious traffic bottleneck.

Meanwhile, property prices in Dubai rose by more than anywhere else in the world, according to a piece in The National, which identifies a 28.5% rise in the first nine months of the year.

Oh, joy. Groundhog day.

Salik Cap Doffed

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The RTA's been and gone and removed the daily cap on its popular Salik road toll, so now if you pass through more than six of the cheery little RFID-enabled gates, you're going to have to pay, baby. This has led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the local papers.

There are now three sets of Salik gates in Dubai - two placed on the arterial Sheikh Zayed Road at Safa and Barsha respectively, two on the Maktoum and Garhoud bridges and now two on the main roads to Sharjah at Al Mamzar (Ittihad Road, AKA 'Murder Mile') and the Airport Tunnel (Beirut Street).

There are actually two gates on the Ittihad Road, but they charge as one - as do the two gates on the Sheikh Zayed road IF you pass between them both within one hour (the one hour limitation doesn't apply on the Ittihad Road, so you can pass under one gate, camp overnight and then carry on without incurring an additional charge.).

Nevertheless, if you want to drive from Sharjah to, say, the Jumeirah Beach Residence and back, you're going to get hit for six tolls, currently by a huge coincidence the maximum Dhs24. Now the cap has been removed, any further Salik teasing will result in Dhs4 a time being deducted with a satanic giggle from your Salik account. The alternatives are, practically, the E311 and E611 bypass roads although with some fancy footwork you can get through Qusais and onto the Al Khail Road.

This route is massively congested during rush hours mainly because everybody and his uncle is trying to save Dhs8 each way (they gets you in the road in and they gets you again on the bridge). Caught up in that snarling traffic, cars cutting in, jostling and changing lanes as they cut you up, slumped listlessly over your steering wheel as you wait for the next creep forward and admire the shimmer of the heat on the metal tightly packed all around you, you could be forgiven for wondering what part of 'clear' does the Arabic word salik mean to the RTA.

The RTA has been quick to point out that the change to the cap will only affect some 5% of drivers, but couriers and logistics providers have been most unamused at the scheme. Probably because that 5% of drivers include them - and they will very easily knock up tens of journeys through those gates a day.

You waitses, preciousss, just you waitses for the outcry when they sneaks in a raise to Dhs5 per gate. Oh noes, you might say, they'd never be mad enough to do that!!! I leave you, then, with this parting thought from super-duper tabloid-tastic newspaper 7Days' report on the whole shemoozle:

"The RTA declined to comment when asked by 7DAYS for more information on why the move is being implemented - and whether there are plans to introduce any more Salik charges in the near future."

Sharjah Salik Gates. Dubai's Hundred Million Dollar Baby

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Back in 2007, when Dubai's Salik road toll was first talked about, there were rumblings and mumblings that the Al Ittihad road linking Dubai and Sharjah would be one of the locations for toll gates. The feared gate didn't materialise at the time. In fact, Dubai's Road and Transport Authority was at pains to dampen speculation regarding a 'phase two' which meant, of course, that phase two was just around the corner.

When it came, phase two added a gate to the Sheikh Zayed Road and one to Maktoum Bridge. Both of these, as the original gates, were avoidable, but only by taking a more roundabout route. In fact the RTA, which likes to trumpet its green credentials (even going so far as to award a silver-plated cow's aorta for sustainable transport), has created a system of tolls that lengthens thousands of commuters' journeys each day by taking the most direct route.

And so it is with the new gates, which set the extraordinary precedent of taxing travel between two emirates. You'll be able to make a tax-free Sharjah/Dubai journey by travelling out to the E311 (The Road Formerly Known As The Emirates Road), a significantly longer drive than the Ittihad road. This is predicated on the vast road improvement scheme currently underway on the E311, which upgrades the junctions leading up to the infamous National Paints Roundabout and is intended to remove the bottleneck at National Paints. This is scheduled, we are told, for completion in April. I'll be delighted if it is, but looking at the current state of National Paints I simply can't see it happening.

What will happen if the changes to National Paints aren't ready or, worse, turn out not to work? Will the RTA go ahead, turn on Salik on April 15 (the announced 'go live' date) and create massive, snarling jams on a road already comprehensively choked by the large volume of inter-emirate traffic it carries? The move will certainly put huge pressure on a brand new road network in a known and notorious traffic hotspot. But then it's Sharjah's problem, isn't it? Dubai won't care, it'll be too busy counting the proceeds.

Back when it was launched, Salik was meant to raise Dhs600 million a year in fees according to 'traffic expert' and chairman of the RTA, Mattar Al Tayer. It's consistently whizzed past those targets, raising a stunning Dhs669 million in 2008 and 776 million in 2009. Media reports in 2011 told of Salik being used to underpin securitised loans of Dhs 2.93 billion based on its revenues to 2015. Apart from that, we have seen few up to date figures on Salik revenues - but a four year loan of Dhs2.93 billion would be about consistent with 2009 revenues - a tad over Dhs730 million a year. There's no doubt, whatever its impact on traffic has been, it has been an amazing success financially.

Now, with the Ittihad road carrying some 260,000 vehicles a day, an amazing number but one that comes straight from the horse's mouth, the RTA can look forward to raising a cool million dirhams a day or a hundred million dollars a year. According to the RTA itself, the whole scheme is intended to divert some 1500 vehicles per day to the E311 or E611 Dubai Bypass Road. I can see a lot more than 1,500 people choosing to take the long way round to avoid paying Dhs8 per day. Most people around here would buy and sell you for a Dirham.

That's effectively a hundred million dollar tax on travel to and from Sharjah. Neat.

It also means you're paying Dhs28 straight away to any taxi to take you to Dubai before the meter starts ticking and Dhs36 if you cross any of the 'internal' Salik gates. When I first came here, you could get a cab to Chicago Beach from Sharjah for Dhs25. Ah, me, but those were the days, eh?

NEW SALIK GATES? ARGH!

Image via WikipediaGulf News today reports that a 'study' by the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority has led to them proposing two new Salik gates - one on Al Ittihad Road (AKA 'Murder Mile') and one 'in Al Ghusais' says the paper, being a tad coy about the precise location. We can only presume that 'in Al Ghusais' means 'on Beirut Street', the second major arterial road into Dubai from Sharjah. (although Damascus and 24th Streets get pretty tasty in rush hour, too)


I have to confess to finding GN's story that this proposal comes after extensive studies somewhat hard to swallow. When Salik was first 'on the anvil' to use one of GN's more memorable phrases, any study would surely have included these two routes - you don't need a study to show that Al Ittihad Road is the most congested road in the Northern Emirates and has been such for the 22-odd years I've been knocking around this place. Every morning a snarling snake of metal belches fumes and induces coronaries from the Sharjah border to Dubai, a pattern reversed every evening. In fact, the Ittihad Road traffic is actually a great deal easier these days since we lost so many people to the joys of the downturn and the bursting of the Great Dubai Property Bubble. It's even reasonably clear outside the major rush hour periods.

Similarly, Beirut Street gets pretty lousy in the rush hours but isn't too bad outside them. I've always been fond of Beirut street - it used to be the sandy shortcut I took to get to Dubai and avoid Ittihad.

Salik gates on Ittihad and Beirut will undoubtedly force traffic out to the Emirates Road (E311) and the Dubai Bypass Road (E611) where Sharjah residents will be burning three times the fuel to make the same journey. So much for the RTA's 'green' lalala...

The Emirates Road is already notorious in rush hour. In the morning, traffic backs up to the Sharjah/Dhaid road intersection, in the evenings you're starting to stop at Sonapour, the labour camp area. It's horrible - jostling, lane-swapping traffic, heavy lorries and cars vying for that little advantage, that little selfish creep ahead of the next guy's bumper. The culprit is the infamous National Paints roundabout into Sharjah where the Emirates Road narrows to three lanes from Dubai's rather more generous seven lane stretch and where the side roads introduce a tiny, but telling, clog factor with joining traffic. I do often wonder if being strongly associated with shitty traffic jams has been good, bad or neutral for the National Paints brand...

I have long had fun posting about Salik (some posts passim linked here), which has been a constant joy to me since it was first announced. The RTA, which had 'no immediate plans' to expand the scheme back in 2008 has in fact already expanded the original gates - this will be the second 'expansion' of the scheme. The pretence that Salik is about traffic management is one I find interesting given the obvious and immediate consequences of this next move (to completely stuff up the Emirates Road), especially coming as traffic volumes and congestion have reduced considerably from the heady heights of 2008. Laughably we're told by the RTA that this is because Salik has succeeded, rather than being because something like 20% of the population has nipped off home to avoid being banged up by banks bent on basking in boodle.

When examinig the motivation for expanding Salik, it's perhaps interesting to hark back to the words of 'traffic expert' Mattar Al Tayer, the RTA's Chairman, in 2007 when he predicted that Salik would one day raise revenues of Dhs600 million per year. According to GN today, it's making Dhs800 million, smashing its original target and providing, IMHO, a very real incentive to expand the scheme once again.

This move will also raise the perennial question of quite how much each journey's going to cost us. If one is to travel from Sharjah to Dubai Internet City, for instance, an additional gate would bring the current cost of the trip in tolls alone to Dhs12 (the two gates on the Sheikh Zayed Road charge as one if you pass through them immediately after the Garhoud or Maktoum Bridge gates). Will this be the case, or will we see the 'multi-gate' discount applied to the relief of drivers?

Then again, the whole proposal may just not go ahead. Ittihad Road was an obvious target for phase one of Salik and was passed over for some reason. We can only wait and see what happens this time...

Trucked

The scenes outside our local ADNOC have started to become apocalyptic: a line of 45 buses stretches out onto the sand-roads behind the petrol station, blocking access to our house from the main road: the line of trucks on the other side stretches out just as far, curling into a strange mandala of decorated, jangling, garishly painted flat-backs. We’re looking at well over 100 vehicles stacked up for the final approach to cheap diesel: Dhs10 per gallon less than Dubai’s filling stations. For a lorry with a 100 gallon tank, that’s a lot of Mars Bars. Every ADNOC’s the same - a line of waiting diesel consumers stretches around the back, down the road - any which way they can, really!

Lugubrious taxi driver Mr G says it’s because Dubai won’t buy refined product from Abu Dhabi and insists on importing the stuff. Interesting, the thought that this could all be down to a sort of family squabble.

Whatever the reason (and we have been rather short of investigative insight from our trusted ‘analogue’ media sources on that one, so Mr. G.’s speculative take is the best thing I’ve heard), the insane queues continue. It must be awful driving one of those orange tankers queued up outside Dubai Shitty City: ten hours to dump your load and then another five hours to fill up with enough diesel to get through the next day.

Paying Salik would be a relief for them: in fact, I could afford to let both queues cross Salik at my expense and still have credit left over, thanks to the muddled administration of the toll that likes to say ‘It’s not our fault our system doesn’t work’...

Silence from the RTA continues. Gulf News' report on Salik's failings today just makes me feel even better about my chances of recovering the money they took as a result of their screw-up.

GnnnnnNNNNN!

Cleared

Salik is a joy to the hearts of many Dubai residents. There are few things that make me happier than passing under that smashing RFID-tabulous gate and hearing the sound of another four dirhams going 'ching' into the giant cash register that is Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority, or RTA. It makes me happy.

Recently I started to get text messages telling me that my Salik balance was low. And then I realised that I really had to do something about it: I was in danger of triggering... gasp... violations. So I went online to try and pay.

The RTA website is a bit of a mess, if I'm honest. It hasn't really been updated since they launched the whole Salik scheme and much of its functionality remains 'under construction'. Online payment doesn't work if you use Firefox, either - only IE is supported. Which is a little Victorian if you ask me.

So I loaded (with a shudder) Explorer and got on with making my payment. It's enabled through the Dubai e-Government 'Epay' site and the mechanism is a little, well, Victorian. Worse, my attempt to pay 'em Dhs 250 (good for a while, about 62 'chings') bombed out: the transaction failed. I tried again, keying my card details in very, very carefully. Failed again. And then I noticed an error message:

“Server was unable to process request. ---> uspEPayResponseUpd: OKCannot insert the value NULL into column 'dtUpdTime', table 'dbDTS.dbo.tbEPayTrxn'; column does not allow nulls. UPDATE fails.”

This didn't look good. I left it a while and tried again, same error message. Three attempts, three failed transactions. I called 'em, but they won't do credit card transactions over the 'phone, which struck me as a little, well, Victorian.

You know what's coming next, don't you? I logged on to the Salik website next day to see how much trouble I was in with those potential violations and... ta da!!!! I've got Dhs750 credit on my Salik tag.

The RTA call center won't process a refund because it's not their policy and anyway it's epay I have to talk to and not them and is there anything else I can do to help you?

The Dubai government helpline ('Dial one to stick knives in your head, dial two to eat lightbulbs, dial three to speak to a human being and solve your problem. Thank you for dialling three. Sorry, nobody's answering that line. Dial one...') says I should go to the RTA because they took my money. Great.

Having lost the plot with both, both have agreed to 'escalate' the complaint to 'the concerned department'. This has been followed by a long silence, but I'm not giving up. Even if it takes me as long as 187 crossings of Salik to sort it out...

Salik. Nyer Nyer Told You!

I've got little to add to what is destined to be a tide of furious blogs on the news today that ten new Salik gates will be built, an expansion of Dubai's road toll system which will ensure that every which way you turn in Dubai, you'll get nailed. Those coming from Sharjah, Ittihad to Garhoud, will get nailed twice.

Mattar Al Tayer, the 'traffic expert', said that RTA was not considering expanding the scheme. I predicted back in July that this was dissembling. I'm sad to have been proved right.

And, again, appallingly communicated.

Some time ago, during the original fuss about Salik, I posted a wholly unhelpful Q&A on Salik. One of the questions was 'What happens if a chance stone hits my windscreen and the tag is damaged?' - of course, God has his way of doling out punishment - my windscreen now has a nice crack right across it from such a stray stone and, a police report, garage visit and insurance claim later, I'm now thoroughly irritated to find I have to buy a new blasted Salik tag. The good news is that they say they can transfer the balance. Let's see...

Money Can't Buy Me Salik

The potty Salik road toll system continues to amaze me. I ran out of credit a couple of weeks ago and, for one reason or another, I haven't managed to top it up. It's just been a mad time and every time I remember or am near a service station I've either been in a mad tear to get to a meeting or I haven't had cash on me. Because, of course, you can only pay for the blasted toll in cash.

A while ago they announced that you could pay online, so I toddled off to their website (www.salik.ae) to do just that. Imagine my delight when I saw that the module was up and running!

So I entered my account number, PIN code and mobile number and then went downstairs to the car to find the tag number because for some reason the system doesn't know my tag number automatically (a miracle of technology integration, is Salik). And then went to the 'Recharge' option on the menu, entered Dhs 250 as my recharge amount and pressed 'Next' to take me to the egovernment epay service and make my payment.

Nothing happened. Because it doesn't work. It's not broken or anything like that: it simply just isn't working. And I've been going back over the past week or so just to check that it still doesn't work.

So I checked my balance (32 Dhs apparently, but I know that it is -32 Dhs) and my violations (no violations).

No violations? Yes! No violations!

Genius. You can't pay for it, but it doesn't matter because nothing happens when you don't pay for it. Which makes it completely, utterly and totally pointless.

Which is what so many of us have been saying all along, I know...

Salik Reprised

Pretty much every Dubai blog has posted loads of grumpy stuff about Salik, the glorious answer to Dubai traffic blues, this one being no exception. I've desisted for some time now, precisely because pretty much anything useful or interesting that could be said had been said.

But I couldn't resist this.

This is a photograph of the Garhoud Road just before you get to Wafi, taken during 'home time' this week. Don't worry, I wasn't taking a photograph whilst moving. The traffic had just started a jerk forwards for a few yards before it stopped again. The left hand lane was crawling in a start/stop action.

See? Salik IS working!!!

Salik Surprises

So much has been written about Dubai’s congestion charge, Salik, that it’s difficult to contemplate adding to what’s already out there without a certain sense of resignation and perhaps a touch of fear that it’s just going to be a repetition of the considerable volume of incredulity, indignation, anger and exasperated invective that has peppered so many blogs over the past couple of months. Even the media, ever-aware of the burden of governmental disapproval, has tried to reflect the broad public dislike of the scheme. Strangely, few of the people who have complained appear to have been motivated to do so by the financial impact: it has been the apparent lack of a clear objective or a well-communicated plan of any sort that has drawn much of the negative comment in both on and off-line media. The response of the RTA, to the broad public concern has, at its least helpful, been to tell the public to stow it because they’re ‘not traffic experts’. The flow of information regarding the scheme and the ‘traffic management objectives’ that we’re told about as we hold for the Salik call centre to finish ‘helping’ other callers has hardly ever been more than a grudging trickle.

I am one of those people whose mobile numbers were ‘given wrongly’: I still have the copy of the form in which my mobile number is given with perfect clarity. I corrected the error over the ‘phone last week when I got through to their call centre. Today I got an SMS telling me that my balance of Dhs 2 was insufficient and that I should top up or face a fine. Now, forgive me, but I thought that one of the ideas was that you’d get an SMS warning you that your balance was low. Apparently not.

So I went to top up. I have to confess I was a little annoyed at having to do this on the spur of the moment rather than with a couple of crossings’ notice, but never mind. The Emarat station just prior to the Garhoud toll only has one till that can take Salik top-ups because they only have one pad of Salik top up forms – a rather analogue, multipart book of slips.

I can pay my phone bill using online and telephone banking, as well as my electricity and water bill. I can pay my traffic fines and I can even renew my PO box online.

But I have to top up my Salik account by filling in a cloakroom slip? So be it. I aimed to top up with a nice Dhs250 so that I wouldn't have to do it again for a good while. So I gave the girl my Visa card. Which is when I discovered you can only pay for Salik by cash.

What a muckle-headed slice of totally incompetent daftness.

But I’m not finished by a long chalk. You see, I then drove over Garhoud to hit the tailback immediately after the bridge. Because it’s gridlocked over Maktoum and the new Floating Bridge through City Centre and up the Ittihad Road to Sharjah. Because the traffic that’s crossed Business Bay to avoid Salik joins Garhoud a couple of hundred meters after the very bridge that this Salik scheme was meant to keep clear. It’s caused worse traffic congestion in the whole Deira area than we have every seen before and THIS IS SUMMER TRAFFIC – the number of cars on the road is something like 25% less than normal.

I thought I’d get a few laughs out of Salik but I, along with a lot of other people, have stopped laughing. Come September, when the traffic levels ramp back up to their usual heaving stock car race levels, there’ll be a whole lot more people not laughing.

Someone should really start doing some explaining.

Salik and Thanks for all the Fish

Looking at visitors to this blog (thanks for dropping by: hope you had fun), it has to be said that many are people that have been searching Google for information related to Dubai's Salik toll gate system and have been ending up here instead. So I'd like to apologise.

Sorry.

I have frequently been frivolous and lobbed stones into the whole Salik debate but genuinely have little constructive to say. That's partly because there's so little to say that is constructive. I also have little useful to tell you other than that Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) allegedly employs some 15 people in its public relations department and has apparently retained at least one, if not two or three PR agencies.

What they are all doing is a complete mystery to me. And no, it's not sour grapes because my agency’s not down home at the farm milking the RTA cash cow. The lack of information, engagement and transparency regarding the whole Salik congestion charge scheme has been remarkable by any standard.

Sure, the Salik system is working now. Sure, most of the major problems have been ironed out (well, apart from my registration SMS not appearing with my all-important account number without which I can't find out my balance or recharge my card, but we won't let that worry us, will we?). But it's the abiding sour taste that it's all left in people's mouths that I find interesting.

It honestly didn't have to be this way. A smarter, better planned and, above all, more transparent communications campaign could have resulted in a better informed public, more buy-in for the scheme (people tend to buy in to a well-put, sound argument that's been properly communicated) and less residual resentment. The investment, in care, time and money, was infinitesimal compared to the scale of the whole scheme.

I wonder if I’m the only person out there that thinks that the communications element of the whole Salik affair has been handled poorly? Somehow I don't think I am...

Are You Getting the Salik Message?

As predicted earlier, the SMS infrastructure that's underpinning the Salik road toll in Dubai has been providing some unscheduled summer surprises, with Gulf News reporting (one suspects a touch gleefully, if the truth be told) on the hapless punters whose mobiles have been flooded with huge quantities of SMSs originating from the Road and Transport Authority (RTA).

Now getting SMS spam is bad enough (it's still an occasional annoyance in the UAE, although nothing like the constant stream we used to get). But these people have been receiving over a hundred texts overnight! Can you imagine what it feels like to get a tsunami of SMS spam from the people behind the universally popular and well regarded road toll scheme?

I bet it had them hopping, I really do...

I still haven't got my activation message. I wonder how they're doing with that data entry? >;0)

That Toll Again

Well, as predicted, the papers were indeed filled with Salik yesterday. Every front page bar one had the story of the clear roads by the toll gates and the chaos everywhere else. Gulf News dared to be different and didn't put the Salik story on its front page at all, which was a nice change. And Emirates Today splashed with 'Salik Chaos' which was an even nicer change, although the tone of the story, perhaps rather predictably, didn't quite follow through from the headline.

Nobody's got a confirmation SMS. Nobody quite knows what's happening about that (although I refer you to my earlier mathematical sleight of hand) yet. Today's papers are still rumbling and grumbling but life is settling down back to its regular rhythm.

Wait 'till they try and sneak the next set of toll gates in, though. Look out for announcements regarding the success of the Salik pilot scheme and how that success has led to a review and subsequent decision to expand it to cover other routes...

My money's on Jebel Ali, Qusais and Business Bay. Because that's where there are 'Salik 2km' signs today, put up by someone who rather jumped the gun...

Salik - A Momentary Lapse of Reason

Well, the papers should be full of this lot tomorrow. Dubai's congestion charge cuts in and it's certainly true that there's been no congestion today at the two points in the city where the toll's RFID scanners span the road.

But oh, dearie me, the picture is far from pretty almost everywhere else. Pushing thousands of cars an hour off the arterial Sheikh Zayed Road meant that the city's streets were heaving: the traffic this evening backed up past the airport, Maktoum and Satwa were rammed with punters trying to find any which way but Salik.

Even the Emarat station before the Garhoud toll had its queues: application form-waving punters ten deep as they made that last minute application for the little orange sticker. Barsha and the area around the projects was apparently misery this morning and will have been again tonight.

Some of the day's best fun was to be had on Facebook, the new forum for the Middle East's chatterers: "It’s a car park! I can’t find the logic in this!!!" says a furious Suzy, while an astonished Alisha keys, "It was also the worst road rage I've ever seen in my life!"

"With the exception of one straight stretch of road starting at Al Barsha, going through Sheikh Zayed Road, towards Garhoud Bridge, the remaining streets of Dubai have successfully, overnight, been turned into one huge parking lot," says a shocked Sherif who goes on, one suspects with a touch of irony, to say: "So worry not residents, all you need to do to grab lunch is turn off your engines wherever you are, pop out for a bite, and odds are, traffic will be at a standstill upon your return!"

While my favourite contribution of the day, from a naughty Nadim, was: "Anyone fancy helping me to take out a half page ad in the newspapers thanking RTA?"

I predicted this would be fun. And yes, I am delighted to have told you so. And I don't think it's really started in earnest yet: the best is definitely yet to come.

What larks, Pip!!

Salik: Wading Through a Mountain of Forms

I was thinking about refusing to babble on about Salik, the Dubai congestion charge, any more simply because everyone's talking about it so much it's in danger of getting boring.

But then I have been giggling quietly to myself so much this morning, I had to share. As predicted in posts passim, Salik is turning out to be far too much fun to ignore.

When you apply for your tag (as I did on Sunday), you fill out a form with your name, address, mobile number and car registration. If the databases were smart, you'd be able simply to give your vehicle registration number and everything else would be pulled from the database. Which rather points to the fact that the registration database isn't linked to Salik. Which rather points to manual data entry of those forms. Which rather points to delays in getting accounts activated.

So I called the nice Salik people on 800 SALIK (800 72545) and asked why I hadn't yet received my SMS advising me that my account was activated, as advertised. And they said there was a data entry backlog and I should kick my heels for a further 2-3 days.

Today's Gulf News (Emirates Today, for some reason is suddenly silent about Salik) reports a four day delay from readers, with one unhappy chappie saying he applied over a week ago and still hasn't got his SMS.

Oh dear, oh dear. There are only three more shopping days to Salik day and I have only yet seen two cars on the roads wearing their Salik tags. Media reports are a little confusing, but it would appear that 200,000 tags have been distributed in total, with reports of sales of 80,000.

Now. Let us assume that each form can be data entered in an average of two minutes (including downtime, error checking & toilet breaks, I think that's more than reasonable). That would mean 333 forms could be processed by one operator in a working day. So 80,000 forms would entail 240 man-days of data entry. If you had a massive data entry operation with 50 people working on entry, you're looking at 6.6 days' work.

However, we've got 200,000 tags out there and, this being Dubai, most people haven't bought their tags yet. Let us assume, then, that the 80,000 already sold have been data entered (although mine hasn't!). From today, we have another 120,000 tag applications to enter. That's going to take our 50 data entry operators ten days. So they'll be entered around about the 12th July given that no more applications are received.

I am, of course, more than happy to be told my calculations are incorrect and do point out that this is all speculation, guess-work and conjecture. But that's what people do when they're not being told what's happening...

So someone, somewhere is likely sitting underneath a huge and growing pile of forms while retailers will be facing the prospect of a weekend of increasingly angry customers demanding their tags and the call centre's in danger of getting flooded and people whose accounts aren't activated are probably going to start triggering fines or just be too scared to go through the gates...

It's all kicking off rather nicely, isn't it? What larks, Pip!

Are Dubai's Businesses Ignoring the Salik Toll?

Most businesses I have spoken to about it haven’t got around to thinking about their policy regarding the Salik congestion charge yet. Which is possibly slightly strange.

Does your company intend to pay the Salik costs of business travel? Will you get an allowance? Or is the company simply ignoring the additional charges and expecting you to pay them out of your pocket?

If companies intend to pay it, it’s possible to envisage the charge contributing an additional cost to service businesses of anything up to 1%. In other words, Salik is a significant potential addition to the cost at the bottom line – and an inflationary contributor.

The costs soon mount up, by the way. And if, as I suspect, we will be seeing a lot more Salik Tollgates springing up, we’ll be looking at the potential for Dubai's busy business types to relatively easily rack up the full daily Dhs 24 per day charge (6 passes) with ease. At Dhs 24 for 5 working days and 11 months (say you spend your four week leave out of the country), that’s a cool annual Dhs 5,280 ($1,444).

So what is the policy? Pay reasonable business travel, pay an allowance to offset the effect on staff pockets or let them pay it themselves? Companies will undoubtedly find staff asking about it over the coming week.

Look on the bright side. One point of view is that it should at least cut down on the useless and frustratingly unnecessary meetings we all suffer from. :)

Salik Goes Ahead. Of Course.

The near-hysterical tone of the chatter surrounding Dubai's controversial Salik (Arabic for 'clear') congestion charge has been cranked up by a report from Zawya Dow Jones that the introduction of the toll may be delayed. The original Zawya story, that the RTA was meeting Sunday to discuss possibly delaying the scheme in the face of public reaction, was denied by the RTA and the denial story is front page 7Days, Gulf News and Gulf Today. Khaleej Times and the Arabics didn't go as big with it.

Zawya's sticking with the story it had, updated here, but is saying that the meeting was duly held and RTA decided to go ahead with the scheme. None of the stories add much information, of course.

We are terribly prone to this type of hysteria here in Lalaland. A few years ago a Shopping Festival stunt to bake the world's biggest cake (it stretched up Maktoum Street and down Muraqqabat or something like that, if my ageing memory serves me right) came to a messy end after a rumour went around that there were keys to a Toyota Lexus hidden in the cake: 'members of the public' lost no time in attacking the enormous sugary confection in search of a bonanza that was, sadly, not there.

Now we're getting hysterical at any opportunity to believe that we won't have to pay Dhs 100 for the damn tag and another Dhs4 every time we pass a toll gate. The level of speculation and gossip that's out there, of course, being the direct result of a flawed and unclear communications strategy. The great lesson here: news expands to fill a vacuum.

But what larks, Pip!

Salik. Who’s Buying the Taxi’s Tags, Then?

Mr. Ghulam the taxi driver is not at all happy about the Salik congestion charge (although, if we’re to believe Gulf News, neither’s anyone else except ‘traffic expert’ Mattar Al Tayer). Apart from anything else, he wants to know who’s going to pay the Dhs100 upfront cost of the Salik RFID tag itself. As a taxi driver, he’s pretty sure his Sharjah company isn’t going to spring for it. Although the TRA has been clear that passengers should pay the Dhs4 ($1) for the toll itself if they insist on passing a toll gate, nobody’s said who should pay for the tag itself. And Dhs100 is a lot of money to a taxi driver here in the city of dreams.

Meanwhile, signs for Salik gates are springing up on access roads to Dubai – spotted so far in Qusais and the Sheikh Zayed Road by Jebel Ali. Does that mean more Salik gates are on the way? Fans of early announcements remember promises of gates on every access road to Dubai and a figure of 70 gates was being bandied about at one stage.

Watch those spaces!!!

Salik Triggers Toll Gate Tetris

I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. Apologies to Gulf News, whose photo triggered this unworthy Friday thought. :)

NOT The Salik FAQ - Questions About The Dubai Road Toll Dodged Elegantly

Obviously based on a huge amount of entirely unhelpful speculation, here’s the FAQ that answers the questions that the official FAQ doesn’t answer!

What happens if I sell my car?

You have to peel the tag off your windscreen, which damages the tag, so you have to buy a new tag. It might leave some bits of plastic and gucky adhesive on the windscreen, but we can’t be sure yet because we haven’t left a tag stuck to a window in the 55C sun for three months yet. Let alone tried doing that for a couple of years. But we’re sure it’ll be OK. Anyway, why should you care? It’s not your car anymore, is it?

Yes, it’s a Dhs50 car sale tax. Well, Dhs 100 really, ‘cos the bloke that’s buying your car has to get a new tag, too.

Do Salik tags go brown and brittle after a couple of years in the sun like everything else around here (including the people)?

No. Yes. We’re not sure. But they’ll still work, so what’s your problem?

Will they? Really? Work?

Yes.

Sure?

Yyyyyes. Almost. But if they don’t we’ll sort that out.

How?

We just will, alright?

What happens to any available balance on my Salik tag when I sell my car?

Good question. You should really get it refunded, shouldn’t you? The money would logically be held against your Salik account rather than the physical tag. You should call the Salik centre to ‘deactivate the tag’ before you sell your car, according to the official FAQ, but there’s nothing about transferring the balance or anything like that. Interesting one. We’re sure it’ll be sorted out for the best. Really. Trust us.

What happens if a chance stone hits my windscreen and the tag is damanged?

You’re being for real here? Right. You buy a new windscreen and a new tag. Da. Are you asking if that tag can be added to your account or if you just add a new tag to your account? Well, that depends. We’ll basically make up the rules for that one as it happens. OK?

What happens if I don’t have a tag at all?

You mean how are we going to catch you? Not sure. Guess we’ll have to wait and see. Alexander’s money is on a photo-based system, which is going to leave someone combing through an awful lot of number plate photos.

If I drive through the Salik tollgate backwards, do I get a refund?

Nice idea, but I rather doubt it will work, don’t you?

More anon... >:)