A revolution to end traffic jams in Egypt

A rise in car ownership and bad traffic leads young Egyptians to create social media and web-based networks to ease road congestion.

|
Dylan Martinez/Reuters
Commuters in Cairo’s rush-hour traffic.

• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.

The complaint in Cairo is that zahma, Arabic for traffic, has become atrocious in recent years and is only getting worse.

Some point to ever-expanding population growth or easy loans leading to more car ownership or ongoing political instabilities as reasons behind the bottlenecks that weigh down daily life here.

Some young people who are fed up – and those emboldened by a wave of social responsibility since the country’s Arab Spring revolution – are doing something about it. They hope social media and mobile and Web-based tools will help ease road congestion.

A group of young professionals troubled by their long work commutes launched EgyptCarpoolers.com (in English), which allows users to offer and request rides. They say it saves gas and helps the environment. There are plans to add content in Arabic.

In another effort from Egypreneur, a network of young entrepreneurs, founder Abdelrahman Magdy says the public will be involved in finding solutions in their upcoming, multifront “Za7ma” campaign. Mr. Magdy, who listens to audio books while stuck in traffic, says they’re developing a portal where people can post ideas, videos, and tech expertise to create a one-stop-shop app that addresses traffic concerns. They’re also planning a social-media blitz and organizing off-line dialogue events around the issue.

They call it a grass-roots movement. “It’s about the public thinking differently and believing that they can make a difference,” Magdy says.

Get daily or weekly updates from CSMonitor.com delivered to your inbox. Sign up today.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to A revolution to end traffic jams in Egypt
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2012/0111/A-revolution-to-end-traffic-jams-in-Egypt
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe