Palm before a storm? :: Telegraph

Quoting, emphasis added:

On a recent trip to Dubai, William P Kistler, European president of the Urban Land Institute, an international research body advocating best practises in land use, met with both public and private sector representatives. Generally, he was impressed by what he saw but had serious reservations about Palm Jumeirah.

"Palm Jumeirah is a peninsular, with one way in and out," he observes. "The question of how the road provision is going to connect into the transit infrastructure is something that we got a not very satisfactory answer to."

He predicts bottlenecks just exiting each of the 18 fronds of the palm, the longest of which has 154 homes. Then all that traffic has to get on to the trunk, where more vehicles will join, and then ashore. Though the five lanes in each direction leading to and from Palm Jumeirah appear generous, this connects to Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai's main highway where traffic moves as slowly as water down a blocked drain [an exaggeration, but it can be quite congested at peak hours as regularly reported in Gulf News].

Two further major road projects are to be built behind the Sheikh Zayed Road - but so are 100 proposed residential towers housing up 40,000 people, right at the head of the palm. "People were wondering if the infrastructure was sustainable, even before they announced the construction of the Palm Jumeirah," says Mr Kistler.

Mr. Kistler is good at avoiding dangling participles. Perhaps the fronds will silt up and you'll be able to walk to shore.

Read the whole thing - including a debate over the number of residences and hotels by completion. Thanks to Desert Idleness for the link.