{"id":71764,"date":"2014-02-14T10:52:22","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T15:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=71764"},"modified":"2014-02-14T10:52:23","modified_gmt":"2014-02-14T15:52:23","slug":"forget-wealth-gap-dubai-might-create-a-car-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2014\/02\/forget-wealth-gap-dubai-might-create-a-car-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget Wealth Gap \u2013 Dubai Might Create a Car Gap"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Just your typical parking lot in Dubai.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wealth has its price.\u00a0 And in the Mideast nation of Dubai, a booming economy has created a burgeoning traffic problem as more and more of its citizens take to the roads.<\/p>\n

With more and more Ferraris, Bentleys and Bugattis caught in traffic, one of the nation\u2019s political leaders has a neat solution to give them a little more room on the road: ban the poor from owning cars.<\/p>\n

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News You Can Use!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cEverybody has their luxury life,\u201d Hussain Lootah, director general of Dubai Municipality, told the National. \u201cbut the capacity of our roads cannot take all of these cars without ownership laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lootah and other Dubai officials are looking at several options but one gaining traction in one of the world\u2019s wealthiest nations would be linked to salaries.\u00a0 It would ban those earning below a set threshold from owning cars.<\/p>\n

The government has been looking at other options, such as boosting generally cheap, subsidized fuel prices, boosting parking and insurance fees, even trying to get the nation\u2019s residents to carpool.<\/p>\n

But such \u201csoft\u201d rules, Lootah lamented, \u201cdon\u2019t work any more.\u201d\u00a0 The reality, he said, is that, \u201cUnless you go hard, no one will obey.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Carsharing could become big business. <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a> for the story.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Speaking at a business and economic forum in Hamburg, Germany, the director general stressed that while \u201cgreen and electric cars are important for Dubai\u2019s future,\u201d the \u201cbiggest challenge\u201d for the country\u2019s future is \u201cthe number of cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those who might suddenly find themselves without wheels, Lootah did point out that the city of Dubai\u2019s new tram system which began operations last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are other alternatives \u2014 taxis, buses, metros. I will build more metros,\u201d declared the Dubai director general. \u201cWe will expand the metro, station by station. We have buses, luxury buses \u2014 but the people don\u2019t go for it because their cars are very cheap.\u201d<\/p>\n

(More and more American households going carless. <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a>for more.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The booming economy has compounded Dubai\u2019s traffic problems because it has encouraged a flood of migrant workers, as well as tourists \u2013 an additional 8.7 million passengers coming through the capital city\u2019s international airport last year. Car sales, meanwhile, have been rising at double-digit levels.<\/p>\n

Dubai isn\u2019t the only place looking to limit vehicle ownership.\u00a0 In fact, Hamburg was an appropriate place for Lootah to make his comments as Germany\u2019s second-largest city is now debating a popular plan that would phase out automobile access over the next two decades.<\/p>\n

Beijing and a growing number of Chinese cities are putting in place restrictions on the number of new vehicles that can be registered each month. And London\u2019s costly commuter tax on vehicle\u2019s entering the center city is being hailed as a model for other cities across the globe.\u00a0 But Dubai would become the first place to specifically set an income test for potential motorists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What to do when the folks driving Bentleys, Bugattis and Ferraris get stuck in traffic? Officials in Dubai may have the answer. As TheDetroitBureau.com reports, they are considering rules that would ban the poor from owning cars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71764"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=71764"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=71764"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=71764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}