23 September, 2008

GAM to spend 5 million/KM on "Poor's railway" instead of BRT!

via alrai newspaper

عمان - محمد الدويري - قال مدير دائرة النقل والمرور في امانة عمان السيد عبد الرحيم الوريكات ان الامانة تعتزم انشاء نوعين من سكك الحديد في عمان اولها خط النقل السريع وموقعه داخل الجزيرة الوسطية والاخر خط سكة اما يكون فوق الارض او تحتها بحسب الدراسات.
واضاف الوريكات في تصريح لـ''الرأي'' ان الامانة ستطرح خلال شهرين عطاء الدراسات والتصميم للمشروعين الذي تصل كلفة الاول 5 ملايين دينار لكل كيلو متر فيما تصل كلفة الاخر 20 مليون دينار لكل كيلو متر.
وبين الوريكات ان خط النقل السريع الذي يطلق عليه ''سكة الفقراء'' سيكون ضمن مسارب خاصة تأتي في الجزيرة الوسطية للشارع وستمتد المرحلة الاولى من شارع الجامعة الاردنية الى المحطة فيما تشمل المرحلة الثانية شارع الاميرة بسمة وثم يربط الدوار الخامس باشارة وادي صقرة ثم المدينة الرياضية.
اما مشروع سكة الحديد، قال الوريكات ان السكة ستمتد من وسط البلد الى المحطة وشارع الملك حسين ثم شارع سليمان النابلسي و شارع شاكر بن زيد الى اشارات وادي صقرة


Important Note: Apparently, Al-rai's reporter missed things up, and the GAM will be implementing BRT in Amman. DETAILS HERE

In short, the Greater Amman Municipality is planning to build a couple of urban railway tracks in the capital, the 1st will be similar to a tramway (if not actually one) in a separate lane in the middle of the streets, and will be called "Poor's railway" and will be connected Al-Mahatta to University of Jordan, and later extended to the 5th circle via King Abdulla Gardens.

The 2nd project will be an underground metro (& maybe onground in some areas) from Al-Mahatta via downtown and Wadi Saqra street to King Abdullah Gardents.

I'm very much into the 2nd project, especially that the area is narrow & needs such a project.

But i don't understand this "Poor's railway / tramway" thing!
1st of all is the name! which is SOOOOOOOOO underrated for such an important and dynamic project. and its not only me mentioning that!

While on the other hand, the HUGE cost of the project raises a big question mark! 5 million JD / KM is a HUGE amount of money. and instead of having all the mess from such a project, and all the years needed to implement it (& the glitches taken from the zarqa light railway project that didn't see light until now), and all the money to spend.

A small simple rapid solution can be implementing BRT instead!
BRT: Standing for "Bus Rapid Transit" is a broad term given to a variety of transportation systems that, through improvements to infrastructure, vehicles and scheduling, attempt to use buses to provide a service that is of a higher quality than an ordinary bus line.

Thus, we can make the same lanes, but with asphalt instead of a railway, with the same stations and ticketing and so ... & have Big Hybrid buses running through it.

& there you go, the entire project done in a couple of months, and with the cost of 2 KMs or less! & pretty much easily extensible.
Like this!

& the buses can be even as big as this!


and the web is just FULL of BRT plans .... here are some blogs even!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Relax Nasim, as usual, nothing will happen, like failed old Raghadan project, down town development, and Zerqa Railway. It's just "hbbet 3rb".

Ali Dahmash said...

haha, the back to the future GAM projects, how about they start with the streets and asphale??
By the way, I posted a campaign about the Hate DVD distributed in the US (http://alidahmash.blogspot.com/2008/09/obsession-with-hate.html) appreciate if you can do the same