ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Traffic jams have become everyone's daily life nuisance in the Iraqi capital city of Baghdad where 7.6 people live. Vehicles on the streets are twenty times more than the capacity of the streets in the city. Authorities in Baghdad have recently launched a package of projects to relieve traffic jams in the city within the next two years. "Dozens of bridges, tunnels, and ring roads have been paved. We are at the stage of completing the fourth phase of the ring road surrounding Baghdad," Basem Al-Awadi, spokesman for the Iraqi government, told Rudaw’s Anmar Ghazi last week. "These projects are related to removing traffic jams, and God willing, at the end of 2024, Baghdad will be in a better and more beautiful condition, and traffic jams will be reduced to a very large extent," he added. In addition to a myriad of security checkpoints, experts attribute a post-war mini boom to the growing number of cars, while the war-battered infrastructure has barely changed. According to studies from a few years ago, the number of vehicles in the Iraqi capital city has surged from 350,000 before 2007 to nearly three million in recent years. Ali Fadel is a taxi driver. "I have been standing in this street for more than half an hour, and this situation is unbearable. Roads and bridges must be built. We give fees for vehicle registration, transfer of ownership, and annual renewal,” he said. "Every day, I pay 15,000 dinars for fuel for the car, the streets are congested, and the work is not enough for a living, and I bring my family a hard-earned livelihood,” said another taxi driver, Jawad Kazem.
