3 August 2007

How Safe are our Roads?

It's not exactly news that our roadwork system isn't the most effective in the world. Whenever a budgeted amount goes towards building something, somehow the final spent amount doesn't always equal that. Where does the rest of the money go? Who knows..

Anyway, situations like that result in delays in construction, as well as compromises in the final product; just as an example, let's talk about the Bukuwara Road. This road (in Riffa) is a busy one, full of shops, restaurants among other establishments, and also seems to be the 'hangout' for a lot of teenage drivers who just got their driving licenses (and some people who are a little older, too). Just stand on a spot in the road and watch the same people come and go.. come and go... come and go...

But anyhow, that's not the point. The point is that for years, this road wasn't in the greatest shape, and renovations were finally planned. The road was filled with road-works for around a year or so, and when done, the final product seemed to look good; straight roads, no pot-holes, new pavements, etc.

A few weeks after the road was completed, I passed by there with a local Riffa resident. I spotted this:



What is that? Turns out that there were two thick metal sheets covering something in the road. As cars kept crossing over it, one of the sheets budged to reveal a hole in the road; a good 1.5 or 2 meters wide, and pretty deep:



So my friend went to explain that a substantial amount of the money that went into renovating the roads sort of got lost in someones pocket along the way, and eventually the road was rebuilt using a lot of "shortcuts". A few days ago, part of the road just collapsed, leaving a big hole in its place. The next day, the workers came to fill it in.

A few days later, another hole materialized. Again, they filled it in next day. And then another..

These holes are pretty big; a car can get stuck in one of them. A little child can fall in them and get hurt pretty badly. It's pretty scary that our public infrastructure can be compromised because of someones greed; a lot of harm could come out of this.

So now I look at the collapsed bridge disaster in Minnesota, USA a few days ago and think; this could very easily happen here. How often are our bridges looked at to see how adequate they are? How much has their structural strength been compromised because of similar conduct by our officials?

Just imagine, Seef flyover collapsing? Or one of the Muharraq Bridges? Hamad Town/Riffa flyovers? I'm also pretty sure our rescue services aren't as capable of handling big disasters as the US services are.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ughhh Riffa is an absolute nightmare, I also live in Bukuwara and in the last three weeks, they closed one the exits I use to go to work so I thought OK they're doing this for a limited time and they will open the road again no worries

wrong!

Now starting from Wednesday they go on and shut the OTHER exit I use to go to work or Manama in general!

Now literally I have to take a huge ugly route just to get to Um Al-nasaan road so that I can get to the highway!

They are a bunch of idiots and these so called municipality council members are a bunch of mullas who have no idea on how to let the traffic move smoothly in the occurance of road works.

Closing two exits from a whole block is not the right way!

This reminds me I'm going to call our council member and tell him off! nehahahahah

And other thing, in all honesty ilhamdulillah Bahrain is prepared for any disasters (الله يبعدهم عنا ان شاء الله) just remeber how well they contained and controlled the Black Day when Bahrain was under blackout

Ammaro said...

I wonder if you're being sarcastic with that last line of yours