Ashghal completes Airport Road (Al Matar St.) construction

Following a month of construction, Qatar’s public works authority Ashghal has announced the reopened Airport Road (Al Matar Street) to traffic.

The removal of a road diversion near the Airport Petrol Station has made it easier for commuters to access the newly-laid road.

The roadworks from Al Wakrah to Doha had begun in July as part of ongoing F-Ring Road construction.

F-Ring

Construction on F-Ring Road began in 2011 and is expected to be completed by the end of this year. Last year, Ashghal announced that the $837 million project was more than 75 percent complete.

Once completed, the 7.2km road is expected to help increase connectivity to Hamad International Airport and the south of Doha.

The project also includes the construction of a new 8.7 km expressway made up of six to eight lanes (three to four in each direction) stretching from Al Muntazah Street to Airport Road (Al Matar Street) and the airport to the south of Doha.

C-Ring Road

Meanwhile, one of Qatar’s most crucial and congested roads, C-Ring Road, has been undergoing major construction since May.

Work on the 6.3km road has been divided into four phases, with the final phase expected to be completed next year. When completed, the new traffic signals, additional lanes and other features are expected to increase road capacity by 25 percent, Ashghal said.

Though the phases were initially supposed to be rolled out one at a time, two sections – phases one and four – are currently underway.

Phase one has seen construction from VIP Roundabout to halfway between Toyota and Gulf Cinema signals and has an ambiguous completion date of the third quarter of the year.

Last month, phase four works began, affecting the New Salata intersection to Kinana intersection (just before La Cigale Hotel) and the Centre Roundabout to just before Al Asiri intersection.

With a mid-January 2015 completion date, this particular stretch of C-Ring was not expected to begin until next year but was rescheduled due to ongoing works of a new expressway project that overlaps C-Ring, according to Ashghal.

Commuter response

With the majority of residents back in the country after the summer lull, and the school academic year beginning this week, Qatar’s roads have been heavy with traffic and construction, much to the dismay of some residents:

But not all drivers have been experiencing unpleasant journeys:

https://twitter.com/abuimad/status/508475115458154497

The traffic congestion is likely not going to be improved anytime soon – according to new projections released by Qatar National Bank, the nation will add more than 300,000 more residents in the next two years, to reach a population of 2.5 million by 2016.

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