You Can't Expect Your Maid to Use Public Transport

Reading The National (everyone's favourite United Arab Emirates Website) this weeks shows us that Dubai has a bit of a problem in that their traffic has become less of this...

 ...and more of this...

Hence this story from Saturday where a municipal chief is proposing that only people at a certain salary level and above will be allowed to own cars.

 

Everyone else has to use public transport.

 

I bet he wouldn't use public transport.

 

Admittedly, this is only one proposal - but it is the one that has caught the most attention.

 

He does also say that parking, petrol and other such costs should alos go up.  I tend to agree with this but mostly because I am jealous of them paying about a meagre 30p for a litre of fuel.

 

He also wants to promote greener methods of getting about promising to put more investment in trams and posh buses - slightly surprising from an oil-rich nation.

 

He may want a word with Maj Gen Mohammed Saif Al Zafeen, director of the Dubai Police Traffic Department and head of the council though.  In this story from yesterday.  The modern Major General is proposing more drivers - 17 year-old ones.

 

But presumably only ones with well-paid jobs.