The Big Debate: Is Salik really a failed experiment?

RTA says that Salik is a good thing. Congestion, they say, has decreased along with average journey time and the average speed along Sheikh Zayed Road has doubled. This is quite an achievement for the city with the world’s highest car ownership per head of population. Some motorists have noticed the change, reporting some impressive reductions in their travel times.

Salik is also one of the world’s more convenient and high-tech toll systems, being electronic in nature and having eliminated the need to stop in the middle of a thoroughfare to deposit a precise number of coins in an ill-placed receptacle.

But many Dubai commuters continue to vilify the system, claiming it has done little to eliminate the logjam, and that it adds a layer of complexity to their travel plans. Do I have time for a detour to avoid passing this gate? How much credit do I have left in my tag?

There have been reports that the SMS system responsible for informing tag owners that their credit is about to run out is unreliable and that this leads to fines. Several motorists have also complained that RTA has fined them in error. Even those who can legitimately prove that this is the case, tell tales of wasted hours battling through RTA red-tape and filling out mountains of forms.

Of course Salik is just a year old and RTA is a fledgling department in the midst of several major projects including the expansion of Salik itself (with two additional toll gates coming online from September), as well as the Dh15.5-billion Dubai Metro.

So should we take a deep breath and bear the gridlock while the creases are ironed out, or should we admit that Salik is a failed experiment and consider some alternatives?