Dubai To Prevent The Poor From Driving Cars To Reduce Traffic?

Dubai, known for the world's tallest building, high density of luxury and supercars and a police force that patrols in high end supercars, has a problem common to most metropolitan cities. Traffic congestion.

Dirt cheap fuel price, low car ownership cost, low parking fees have led to almost everyone in Dubai travelling by their own cars. This, despite the adequate among of public transportation that exists that includes "luxury buses", metro and a new tram system.

Also Read: Dubai Police Department Supercar Fleet

So, how do you bring the traffic problem under control? Dubai's director general, Hussain Lootah has a few ideas and this could, in one way, prevent certain lower income section of the population from driving cars, while the obscenely rich, supercar crowd continues to run around in their massive fuel guzzling four wheelers.

Speaking to The National, Lootah stated that "Everybody has their luxury life, but the capacity of our roads cannot take all of these cars without ownership laws."

Also Read: Supercar Grand Parade Led By Police Luxury Cars

Lootah believes you have to come down hard on people to make them follows rules, which in this case has to do with making use of the public transport system. "There are more than 200 nationalities in Dubai. I can't see [education and awareness] having an effect, and soft [regulations] don't work any more. Even in Europe and America it doesn't work. Unless you go hard, no one will obey," Lootah's quoted as having said in the report.

Increasing parking fees, insurance policies, taxes are some of the ways the director general seeks to control the number of cars on the road. But the one method that sounds controversial is this.

A salary limit could be put in place that would allow one to drive a car only if the person's income is above a certain limit. But what this limit is going to be no one knows yet.

Your thoughts?