The works at Mkalles roundabout were recently concluded and the bridge as well as the tunnel have been open for a while now. However a few crucial points puzzle me:
- The roundabout is still a roundabout.
- Let’s say you are coming towards Mkalles from Jisr el Basha and you need to make a u-turn to go back, you actually must drive through the whole roundabout and get stuck in the traffic that’s going towards Mansourieh, Dekwene, Hayek and Habtoor. This fact also applies whether you are coming from Dekwene, Mansourieh, Hayek, or Habtoor.
- Most people that drive down daily towards Beirut, from Mansourieh, Daychounieh, Ain Saade and the surrounding Matn areas were waiting for the works at Mkalles to finish hoping the roundabout will no longer be the bottleneck it once was. Sadly though, this is not the case since these people are not even being able to easily reach the infamous roundabout in the first place. The thing is, the actual bottleneck is at the SKAFF gallery turn (a.k.a mafra2 l OTV) where the incoming traffic specially during rush hours is barely if any organized.
The situation is only going to become worse with the school season just starting and the rain we all love soon pouring on our well paved roads.
I understand that traffic jams are common, specially in our country, but a 3 long years multi-million dollar project should have provided the needed solution in an area where traffic is a major issue.
photo via http://throughatoonerdarkly.wordpress.com/