Why Dubai needs more road tolls
Judging from the comments on ArabianBusiness.com, it is clear that most people do not object to road tolls. What they object to is the way the 'Salik' project was implemented.There should be a toll for using all congested roads in Dubai, and the most efficient way to achieve this is to create a perimeter bound ‘congestion zone’ that everybody must pay to enter. The zone might stretch from all points along the Sharjah/Dubai border to the North; Al Barsha and the Burj Al Arab to the South; and all points West of Sheikh Zayed Highway that feed into the road such as Rashidiya and Oud Metha Road past Al Wasl Hospital or Doha Street up to Defence Roundabout. The zone should stretch to the coast from North to South.
There should be a single charge per day for entering the congestion zone. The RTA is currently budgeting for regular Sheikh Zayed Road users to spend AED16 per day. Let’s round that down to AED15 per day, which I think is a reasonable price for all motorists to enter this expanded congestion zone.The congestion zone is a device that is used to ease traffic at the busiest times of day, and should therefore not be in operation 24 hours per day, seven days per week. It should operate from 6am-9pm Sunday-Thursday.If people get into the zone before 6am, they should not be charged for that day unless they leave and re-enter. People that can prove they live inside the congestion zone should be eligible for a substantial discount. If they were charged to use the zone every weekday of the year, it would cost AED3900. An 80% discount to AED780 per year would be reasonable.Even with this fairer and more logical Salik system, the Dubai Road Transport Authority would still be open to the criticism that it is penalising motorists without offering any alternative public transport options.However, this is not true. The RTA will spend over $9.5 billion (AED35 billion) on public transport by 2020. The plan includes the construction of 318km of metro lines, 270km of tramlines and the addition of 3,000 buses to the existing fleet.Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) also plans to spend $12 billion on upgrading the emirate’s road network by 2020 including building 500km of new roads, 95 interchanges, nine ring roads and more lanes crossing the creek in an effort to tackle Dubai’s escalating traffic problems.The RTA has to raise revenue somehow to pay for this expansion and, in a country without income tax or corporation tax, it is not unreasonable for people to pay forms of direct taxation such as road tolls.The RTA cannot hope to recoup the investment of over $20 billion that is being spent on roads, bridges and public transport over the next 13 years. But it deserves the right to raise revenue at reasonable rates.A proportion of all fares on public transport, including taxis, water taxis, buses, trains and trams should go to the RTA, and so should road toll revenue. Controversially, the RTA might also be allowed to levy a duty on fuel, which would make driving more expensive and should contribute to driving gas-guzzling, high-polluting cars off the roads.The argument will run for the next decade over whether the RTA has the right to raise revenue before it delivers services but, as I pointed out earlier, this is not the case. Nobody has been charged until now for the massive expansion in the road network, so it is only reasonable that charging begins now. If the congestion zone is created in a way that everybody pays to enter it, the area should experience far fewer traffic jams, so public transport like buses would be able to run more efficiently. The result would be the start of a joined up traffic policy that people could actually see working. It wouldn’t stop them complaining about fees and changes imposed on the way they like to get around town, but the RTA would have a much more robust defence for its plans. Source
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