Think about Al Ittihad road, what strikes your mind? I am sure your ear drum will experience the sounds of gridlock traffic jam. From years, Dubai to Sharjah road is witnessing exceptionally heavy traffic jam.You can find Al Ittihad Road always occupied with vehicles, particularly during peak hours, causing great inconvenience to the travellers.
Sharjah – a place with high population as millennial earning their livelihood in Dubai are able to find reasonable accommodation there. According to the study conducted by Aurecon, a Dubai based international transport planning firm, there are about 9,00,000 daily vehicular trips, peak direction flow is 40,000 vehicles (52,000 passenger trips) during the heavy hours on this road.
Besides this, current road capacity is just 33,200vehicles/hour across different corridors. 40,000 vehicles use the highways’ per peak hour, causing delays of up to 2 hours 40 minutes. From this statistic, it is quite visible why traffic jams are so evident at Sharjah to Dubai road.
No doubt that Dubai government is serious about this problem, it even had designed many projects to find key solution but till this date, no positive result has been obtained. Relax because the good news is approaching. We can imagine Elon Musk Tunnel project, Can’t we? Well projects like Elon Musk’s Tunnel could reduce traffic on the congested highways between the Emirates by more than 30 per cent. This tunnel could offset at least a third of the current traffic problems in Sharjah.
The announcement of this tunnel came in an apparently off-hand way on Dec 17, 2016 with a tweet of Elon Musk sent in a bit of frustration during the Los Angeles rush hour.
After this tweet, he changed his Twitter bio to include: “Tunnels (yes, tunnels)” alongside the other companies he runs.
Elon Musk Tunnel, which is being built under the company name of ‘Boring Company’, is designed to relieve traffic on roads by creating an underground network. The concept of operating this tunnel is using 3D road network model that will encompass the needs of any city’s transport of arbitrary size.
In fact Godot, which is Musk’s name for the giant tunneller, has said that it isn’t possible for everyone to be using a “2D road network” but if you want to create more space you have to go up or down – with down being his preferred option. His comparisons are akin to flat 2D platform games versus 3D worlds.
The tunnel has been completed in the state and if Musk is serious about running Boring Company, it can solve Sharjah to Dubai traffic problem.
Proposed as an alternative to California’s high-speed rail project, the levitating pods would travel in the near-vacuum tubes at almost the speed of sound. The Hyperloop could connect Los Angeles to San Francisco in 36 minutes. Imagine! This tunnel connecting Sharjah to Dubai road…Woah! It is surely going to be the game changer for Dubai to Sharjah road. Like in the US, through this tunnel there could be more than one way of linking the two Emirates through the metro and this is one such hypothetical scenario of what could happen if a metro link is built between Dubai and Sharjah. According to the rough sketch of statistics, on an average, this tunnel can help in transporting more than 16,000 passengers per peak hour out of the 52,000 passengers that currently use private vehicles.
The introduction of this tunnel in Dubai can be considered as a complete solution for Dubai to Sharjah traffic mess. It needs to have wider urban planning, policy intervention and integrated planning approach by the authorities.
We hope Dubai to Sharjah road will soon experience this remarkable revolution. We are waiting someday Musk will start this tweet travel journey in Dubai.
Hope you are enjoying our blogs. TripJohn wishes you happy new year.