Motorists and travelers who regularly cross the King Fahd Causeway linking Eastern Province and Bahrain are complaining of the long hours they spend in crossing the bridge because of traffic jam. Thousands of motorists cross the bridge everyday from both sides of the border. They are mostly Western businessmen and executives who reside in Bahrain but work in Eastern Province, as well as Saudis and other Arab nationals who also live in Bahrain but have jobs and businesses in Al-Khobar, Dammam, Dhahran, Jubail and other cities in the Eastern region. Bahrainis also frequently travel to Eastern Province to do their shopping. Traders from Manama also buy in wholesale cheap goods from Al-Khobar and Dammam for resale in Bahrain. “It has become grueling and exhausting crossing the Causeway,” said Basil Al-Hussain, a Saudi who works for a trade organization in Dammam. He commutes daily from Bahrain to Saudi Arabia but resides in Bahrain with his family. He said he spent three hours last Monday at the immigration sections of both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain because of a kilometer-long stretch of cars trying to pass through the immigration. Norman, a Western executive who manages a multinational company in Dammam that markets industrial equipment and resides in Bahrain, said he has to beat the traffic jam by starting early from Manama. “If you arrive seven in the morning at the Bahraini immigration, you will not be able to reach Al-Khobar by nine because the immigration will be clogged with cars by then,” he said. Traders and truckers of goods to and from Eastern Province are also complaining of traffic jams and the long line of big trucks trying to cross the causeway everyday. “It is affecting our marketing timetable, in reaching our buyers in Bahrain,” said Bassam, a Saudi trader distributing clothing materials and textile to shops in Bahrain. Bassam complained of big trucks carrying cement and other construction materials bound for Bahrain from Saudi Arabia. “These are huge trucks that congest the customs area; it is simply a nightmare,” he said. Bassam also urged the immigration and customs section to increase the number of entry points on both sides of the immigrations and customs. “The Saudi side is not often manned by people, and it is distressing to see few of the entry points opened when the queue is already very long,” he said. Frequent travelers across the causeway have observed that the bridge is no longer able to accommodate the build-up of traffic through these years. The number of Saudis and expatriates traveling to Bahrain during weekends has also increased, further congesting traffic during Wednesday evening until late Friday. Bahrain has become the recreational center of Saudis and expatriates. “My daughter goes to an international school in Bahrain, and I have to motor her as early as five in the morning in order for her to catch up her classes,” said Edilberto, a Filipino engineer. This coming holiday, the causeway will be exceedingly clogged again, according to Rahim Mahmood, a Pakistani national. “Holiday spenders from here and even from Kuwait will travel down to Bahrain again. In addition to the traffic jams at the causeway, cars from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will be creating traffic jam also in the narrow streets of Bahrain.”
