Ashghal on track to deliver action plans on road safety

Qatar’s Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has so far completed 21 of its 34 ‘action plans’ aimed at making the country’s roads safer, an official said yesterday.“We are on track to deliver 90% of these actions by June this year, some will continue in the next five years (2018-2022),” Ashghal’s strategy co-ordinator Fabian Marsh told the “3rd Forum for Co-ordinators of the Authorities Concerned to Implement the National Traffic Safety Strategy.”The two-day forum, which concludes today at St Regis Doha, is held under the patronage of HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani to discuss the next phase of National Traffic Safety Strategy 2013-2022.The Ashghal official said these action plans, which have been presented to the National Traffic Safety Committee (NTSC), focus on ‘safer roads’, ‘safe speeds’, and ‘road safety management.’Under its road safety remedial works improvement programme, Ashghal will work to further reduce the possibility of head-on crashes, making intersections safer, and eliminating other hazards on the road.Ashghal is mulling to build upon and implement NTSC’s recommendations, under the Qatar Pedestrian Crossing Masterplan, that will identify connection problems and safety issues that need to be rectified with the existing road network.Marsh said they are also looking at a number of best practices in road engineering projects that use tools and solutions known and proven in other countries.“We want to pilot those technologies and practices here in Qatar, and identify any localisation issues, then, identify opportunities to mobilise elsewhere,” he said.Marsh noted that they also see some approaches such as developing additional and supplementary guides, standard drawings, procedures, and specifications to support the delivery of road safety projects.Ashghal will also review and update existing speed limits and submit it to the National Speed Limit Management working group. Such a move, Marsh believes, will significantly reduce fatal accidents and injuries on the road.“To support this, we recommend a speed running strategy similar to the one in Abu Dhabi in the UAE,” Marsh said. “As an example, one of the recommendations is that all arterial roads in the urban network must have a maximum of 60kph.”He also highlighted the importance of monitoring speed behaviour across the road network in Qatar by creating a programme of speed surveys annually.“We acknowledge that there is a significant issue with high speed on the road (free ways), as well as work zones, and we are finding those locations cropping up more frequently in terms of crashes,” the official added.