Okaz newspaper THE streets of Jeddah are overflowing with cars and people. Simultaneously, our airports keep welcoming newcomers from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. In Jeddah, there are approximately four million people, Saudis and expatriates, who use over one million vehicles to move around. If I'm not mistaken, about 700,000 vehicles travel on roads during rush hours. There's nothing weird about this number. Growth is expected. In today's world, 250 babies are born every minute – that is 15,000 babies every hour. Half of them die before seeing the light, i.e. about 105 babies or 42 percent of them pass away every minute. Of course, this number does not include the victims of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria. In the Kingdom, according to the statistics issued nine years ago by the Ministry of Economics and Planning, one baby is born every minute; that is to say, 55.5 babies every hour. I believe this number must have increased to two babies per minute. What really matters here is how to solve traffic jams in light of the growth of population. Jeddah Traffic Department should seek solutions to reduce traffic congestions by 25 percent. This can be done by adjusting traffic-light timers at some streets and assigning traffic officers at some intersections to organize traffic flow; especially at places where traffic gets congested by drivers who do not have a sense of traffic rules. Both Saudi and expatriate drivers can transform a three-lane street into a five-lane road. In the blink of an eye, you will often see a driver in the far right end of the street moving to the far left end. This happens in the absence of traffic police officers and at locations where stoplight timers change from green to red extremely fast. I hear that intersection projects are being implemented. Nevertheless, there's got to be a solution, and it doesn't have to be a comprehensive one. All I'm saying is we don't want to become like Beijing, Mexico City or Johannesburg, the three most congested cities in the world. I don't expect things to get that bad because there are four million of us in Jeddah while in Beijing there are 22 million. Nevertheless, we should have contingency plans to deal with this growth in the number of people and cars. Nowadays, when we want to run an errand by car, we think carefully about it. I urge the traffic administration to start thinking about solutions. Many traffic police officers were educated abroad on how to solve traffic congestion problems. I don't know why it is taking them so long to come up with the solution. They should find one now and shouldn't wait for the Ministry of Transport to come up with one, nor should they wait for the road projects to be completed. __
