UAE has best road quality but could do better on congestion

DUBAI // The UAE may be ranked number one in the world for road quality but it lags behind other nations when it comes to road safety and traffic congestion, new data shows.

Study results published by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), one of the UK’s leading economic consultants, showed the UAE as the world leader in road-building.

It was followed by Singapore, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Japan, France, Switzerland and Austria. The US was 13th, Germany was 16th and Spain was 17th on the list.

Roads in Oman also featured highly, ranking 19th of the overall list ahead of Britain (27th), Malaysia (20th), Namibia (23rd) and Ecuador (24th).

Despite the standards of roads in the UAE, it performs poorly in congestion and traffic accidents.

Roshanara Sait has hosted more than 40 road-safety events in the UAE in her role as director of Ciel Marketing & Events, a firm working with police in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah and the Roads & Transport Authority.

Harsher prosecutions for bad driving will help halt rising accident numbers, she said.

“Stricter law enforcement is the solution and the local authorities are working towards this,” she said.

“They have recently introduced state-of-the-art cameras and increased police patrols on the roads. The traffic prosecution department follows a stringent non-leniency attitude towards reckless and traffic offenders.

“These measures together with the road safety awareness campaigns should certainly improve road user behaviour, which will help make UAE roads safer.”

The road quality ranking is an improvement on a 2012 report published by the World Economic Forum that showed the UAE second on a list behind France as having the best roads in the world.

On a scale of 1 to 7, with countries scoring 1 having extremely underdeveloped roads to those scoring 7 with extensive and efficient roads, the UAE scored 6.5, ahead of Singapore, Portugal and Oman in the top five.

Although the UAE may have the best roads, it does not score as highly when it comes to traffic.

A study by Inrix, a traffic analyst and consultancy, suggested Dubai is 174th on the list of 1,064 cities in the world for traffic, where in 2016 drivers spent 11 per cent of their driving time sitting in congestion.

Al Ain, the only other UAE city to feature in the figures, ranked better at 514th on the congestion list.

Recent bad weather has caused chaos on the roads and highlighted poor driving, with more than 1,100 road accidents recorded in Dubai last weekend.

Dubai Police’s control room received 15,308 emergency calls and recorded 1,163 traffic accidents, with many driving erratically in poor weather conditions.