Dubai, the tourism and trade hub of the Arab world also tops as its most crowded city,as ranked by 5,000 professionals in 14 Middle East cities. Bumper-to-bumper traffic holds commuters for over two hours daily even as the city has the Middle East’s largest shortage of parking space.
While investors have given more impetus to glamorous mega projects, such as a tower in Dubai that developers say will be the world’s largest when complete next year and date palms island. In the process, transport and housing infrastructure has lagged far behind.
The 15-kilometer commute from the neighboring UAE emirate of Sharjah, where many expatriates live, takes an average of two hours and 44 minutes roundtrip despite two express highways. To add to their woes, the population of the city is likely to double again to more than 2 million by 2015.
Dubai is planning a four-line metro system which should begin operations in 2009, a floating bridge over Dubai creek, the city’s main waterway, and water taxis that will run along the creek and to the man-made islands off the coast to ease congestion.
So if you plan to live in the middle east then it would be best to opt for Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, which was found to be the least congested city, with an average commuting time of 46 minutes. After Dubai, Cairo was found to be the second-most congested city, with average daily commuting times of one hour and 33 minutes.
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Source: Reuters