The number of vehicles on the roads of Abu Dhabi is increasing at a rapid pace and so is traffic congestion. There was a need to check this growing problem and hence there are toll gates being introduced on all four major bridges of Abu Dhabi from Tuesday, a top official from the Department of Transport Abu Dhabi said during a private chat with community members at Mohammed Khalaf Majlis.
Ibrahim Sarhan Al Hamoudi, Acting Executive Director, Surface Transport Sector at the DoT, noted that by end of 2018, there were 1.1 million registered vehicles in Abu Dhabi.
"It's just too many vehicles on the roads. This has resulted in too much of traffic in Abu Dhabi, especially in morning and evening hours."
Al Hamoudi underlined there are more than 44,000 vehicles on the road every hour, which was a dangerous trend. "Every day, you have 24,000 vehicles plying per hour in morning and almost same number in evening hours entering and exiting the city. Toll gates will help reduce the traffic on the roads by 8 per cent. This will have positive impact on the environment too."
He noted that in the past decade, Abu Dhabi government has spent Dh32 billion on roads just in the capital city. "There are lots of new innovative developments you will see in future."
From Tuesday, toll gates will be operational but not charged until January 1, 2020.
Copyright © 2019 Khaleej Times. All Rights Reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).
