Traffic at King’s Road eases with the elimination of intersections

The Jeddah Traffic Department is implementing plans to reduce traffic along the majority of roads and main streets during peak hours.
Accordingly, all the main streets that intersect with the King’s Road in the area of ​​the Corniche have been closed off and traffic signals have been stopped and replaced with u-turns to ease traffic.
Such changes were confirmed to Arab News by Colonel Zaid Hamzi, official spokesman of Jeddah Traffic Department, who added that the King’s Road usually witnesses the most traffic throughout the day, especially in the morning and evening hours and specifically along the Corniche. He also pointed out that among the intersections that have been canceled is the Hera’a intersection with the King’s Road, adding that it has been replaced with a u-turn.
King’s Road is expected to witness even greater traffic due to the high number of tourists and hikers in the days leading up to Eid. Such changes, he explained, come in line with similar steps already taken by the administration on Palestine Street, Andalus Street and Al-Seteen Street.
Colonel Hamzi appealed to all drivers to abide by regulations and traffic rules and to try and avoid driving through crowded areas by using alternative streets, stressing that the Jeddah Traffic Department has not spared any effort to solve the problem of traffic congestion plaguing the city of Jeddah in light of population expansion and urbanization.
More than 4 million cars roam the streets of Jeddah daily. He also noted that there are more projects and similar actions designed to improve some of the roads and streets of other major areas of Jeddah to ease congestion in cooperation and coordination with the Secretariat of the city of Jeddah.
The date of completion of these projects is yet to be announced.
For his part, Mohamed Al-Ghamdi, engineering manager at the Transport and Traffic Department in the Jeddah Municipality, declared that the closure of all intersections within the King’s Road and the elimination of traffic signals were based on studies and research carried out by the Secretariat. According to Al-Ghamdi, the move will ease the traffic pressure by about 70 percent.
Abdul Qader Al-Zahrani, a resident of the city of Jeddah who lives in the Al-Ruwais neighborhood, said that getting to the Corniche usually takes more than half an hour but that since the cancelation of the intersections and the traffic signals, the journey now takes around ten minutes.