Transportation is becoming a real troubling issue in many countries around the world. As it’s one of the significant necessities in everybody’s daily life, it requires a constant attention for improvement from the authorities concerned in every nation. Everybody is in need of transportation, regardless of what it is. In fact, transportation is an everyday necessity for one and all, men and women, young and old.
For many people, owning a car comes first on the list of priorities in their lives. There are people who can’t bear living without a car of their own. Nowadays, owning a car is becoming an urgent necessity more than just being a complement to other life necessities. Case in a point, adults start owning a car immediately after completing secondary school; the car will be the first thing they think of as they join a college, university or job.
Would you bear not having your own car for a day or two?! Undoubtedly, you will feel that your life is unbalanced as there is something important missing. Even if you are living with your family, you need to have a personal car to manage your own daily tasks. Today, a car is regarded a way of reaching all other things in life. Nobody can deny this fact indeed!
As a country with no reliable transportation system, we are all having no choice, but to each one has a personal car. In a family of 10 people, you might need to have at least five to seven cars if not one for each, unfortunately! Other than that, in some families, you can see people having more than a car, so they end up having more cars than the number of family members. This is a worst case scenario which is very real sometimes.
Imagine if this happens in three houses within a neighbourhood of 20 to 30 houses. The place will end up being full of cars parked in every corner of the road and front yards of the houses. It’s really unbelievable and intolerable! However, it’s really happening with many people all over the country. In fact, having a car is being more important than anything else in people’s lives.
Due to the unreliability of public transportation system in the country, people are obliged to use their own cars wherever and whenever they want to go. They can’t rely on the irregular public buses and taxis. As most public taxis are operated by individuals and not service companies, people can’t depend on such means of transportation. For all these reasons, having a personal car is a must for everyone here.
Public transportation should always be very convenient and consistent, but the case is different here. We don’t have a locally reliable transportation system that could serve citizens, residents and tourists alike. Accordingly, people prefer to use their own cars; commuters, for instance, use their cars going to work everyday.
In a bid towards improving the public transportation, Oman National Transport Company introduced new buses that connect different destinations in the city through various routes. Such service is expected to make commuting easier for people. However, it doesn’t make much difference unfortunately.
The buses operating on these routes are taking much time than usual. Having a taxi is even much better that going on one of these buses. Going to a destination that needs a 20-minute drive, it takes around 40 to 45 minutes on a bus. Based on a personal experience, sometimes it’s not effective and efficient way of transportation. Hence it becomes unreliable means of transportation.
As a common observation, I think these public transportation buses require having special routes to avoid roads which are jammed with cars all day.
Then, it would be more reliable, cost effective and efficient way of transportation to move around the city. Otherwise, it would just add to the daily traffic and people would avoid taking these buses.
Abdulaziz Al Jahdhami
aljahdhami22@gmail.com
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