Traffic

It’s funny how a city without much of anything to do would have so much traffic at night! Mind you, there are no movie theaters, no large concert venues, or bars or dance clubs….but man; you would never think traffic could get this bad!!! If you plan on going anywhere at night, at least double the time required in order to get there on time!!! I’m not exaggerating: Interstate 10 at peak hours in Baton Rouge looks like a speedway….


I think part of the problem comes from the configuration of the major “shopping” areas in Riyadh. Although the city has grown over the past 40 years at an amazing rate, it looks like the 4 major streets where all the “good” shopping is located are all interconnected and fit into one square kilometer of each other. If you look at a map, locate the Kingdom Tower, go down Olaya Street and here’s Faisaliah tower…they must be less than one kilometer away from each other. Right after Faisaliah you have Thalia and Thalatheen Streets where all the good restaurants are…So you just get stuck in traffic whenever you go in that area of town. That’s probably one of the funny things around here: stores are grouped according to their specialty. Looking for flowers, turn right on the street after the Kingdom Tower; looking for tires: easy – go to the used car parts souk off of Aruba Street. Chocolate anyone…Thalateen Street is the place to go… so I guess the grouping of stores makes it easy on you to find what you’re looking for…but makes the traffic heavier at times.

Should I also mention that Saudi society is a night society? It’s not uncommon for our students’ mothers and fathers to party all night, send the kids off to school, sleep all day and get up when the kids come back from school. Stores and malls are open every day until 11:00 pm. Dentists see patients from 4:00 pm till midnight…I know this because my colleague’s husband is a dentist and that’s his daily shift! So, people here sleep during the day and live at night. No, the working people have a slightly different schedule: we get up in the morning, go to work, get off work, and go to bed at a reasonable hour. Those who don’t work can do the night life! And the “normal” people get stuck in that night traffic when they dare leave the house at night.

One last reason I can think about to explain this traffic is the traffic patterns and the way drivers deal with the Riyadh streets!! Since we got here, I am not sure how many times I have thought to myself it may be a blessing in disguise that I am not allowed to drive in the Kingdom! For one thing, you have to understand that, fifty years ago, Riyadh was nothing more than a little village. It’s grown tremendously since then, at a rate of adding ONE million people every 5/10 years!! So, you can imagine that the road infrastructure that was here 10 years ago is so totally outdated! There are not enough roads for the millions of cars on the streets… and the roads that are here are all making you turn right down one road for 1 km in order to do a u-turn and turn left…. That’s pretty much the only way to turn left throughout the city.

Add to this chaos the way MEN drive here…(and for once, you can’t blame it on the women….) Let’s say you’re on a four lane highway, you need to turn left…..where do you go? Any right thinking person would place their vehicle in the furthest left lane to make a quick and easy turn…Well, in Saudi, if you need to turn left, ANY lane works…. Being in the furthest RIGHT lane won’t prevent you in any shape and form to turn LEFT…you take your life in your hands when you do this but this is not too infrequent to be cut off at the middle of an intersection by someone going from the furthest lane in the opposite direction. This habit does slow down traffic and create more traffic jam….

So, to sum up this diatribe about traffic….in Riyadh, traffic totally sucks and yes, I am glad (for once) that I am not allowed to drive in this craziness!!!


Proof that drivers and passengers are crazy  doing what they call "land skating"