MP Abdullah Al-Turaiji yesterday submitted a proposal to the National Assembly calling to restrict vehicle ownership by expatriates to only two and impose extra fees on any additional vehicles, saying the proposal aims at reducing traffic jams. Turaiji’s proposal calls on the interior ministry to take the necessary measures to restrict the number of vehicles foreign residents can own for personal use to only two “to counter the illegal trade in vehicles, reduce traffic jams” and “ensure there are enough spaces for the use of Kuwaiti citizens at commercial malls, markets and public places”. Source
Can someone explain how me owning more than 2 cars causes traffic jams? Is there a way to drive all my cars at the same time cuz if there is I’d love to do that?
56 replies on “MP: Expats should only own 2 vehicles to reduce traffic jams”
It doesn’t reduce traffic jams, its just gives him publicity, and his ‘constituents’ will be happy and vote for him again because he’s anti expats,
If this is the case .. Safa AlHashem wouldn’t lose.
Why are we surprised? When has any new rules made any sense?
Well in reality, a local family of 7 working grown ups in one household own 7 vehicles, which should make the proposal intended for them, not expatriates. Just saying 🙏
That would mean they own 1 car per person. The MP is proposing limiting it to 2 cars per person. If those 7 people own 3 cars each they’re still only driving 1 car to work so doesn’t matter if they have 1 car or 10 cars, it wouldn’t make a difference to traffic.
Shut the **** up and establish a working mass transit system you scapegoating ****.
No one will need to own a car in the first place if this entire country wasn’t rebuilt from the ground up with cars in mind.
Where would someone start from that’s the biggest issue I think. Like if you put me in charge I wouldn’t know what to fix first. I want sidewalks but in heavily congested areas like Salwa or Qortoba for example where the streets are tight and every family owns multiple cars but built a house without any consideration for parking, everyone just parks on the streets and whatever sidewalks there is. In areas like Salmiya where tall residential towers are built with 60 apartments but only 12 car parks, what do you do?
But I guess upgrading the public infrastructure would be an easier job like starting off with the basics. Improve the quality of busses, be a lot stricter with the bus companies and the drivers. Install better bus stops, improve timetable accuracy, digitize the service so people can track upcoming buses. Then do the same with cabs. Like lets get that out of the way first and then think of bigger projects like the metro.
Mark lets consider all this in Vision 2055.
For the residential parking, at the point we’re at I think there is only one way..
Enforce the law stronger for those who park on the streets and build multistory car parks for areas like salmiya and for salwa etc big parking lots.
Govt ones can be free, private owned can be charged
Then go and finally build the metro which is on hold since I think 1999 and get improve the public bus experience.
That’s the only way I see it being fixed. This will help traffic plus the parking issues.
Exactly. Just the other day I saw an old man pushing himself on a wheelchair in Kuwait City on the side of the road because of sidewalks being absolute trash. It was a sorry sight which looked like something out of a third world country.
I gotchu Mark.
it’s quantum mechanics. schrodinger’s cat is both alive and dead at the same time until the box is opened.
until the expat is caught, he/she is both driving, and not driving, all the cars at once.
😂😂😂😂😂😂 this is the best
The hypothesis is being spiced up here, paradox being if we open the box how many cats we are allowed find, 2? Both will be dead or alive 😂
The main reason for traffic is that most of them even for their kids have a seperate vehicle with drivers.
LMAO
Good one🤣
If there was a meme festival for country , Kuwait would break all the records !
The call is coming from inside the house, dear MP…
Or, how about they work to make a lane of Bus and taxis? Why are we lacking that? Even dubai has it let alone the other european countries. Install cameras on that lane for immediate capture of who ever is using it apart from bus and taxi?
But over all these I think stricter road rules, where people don’t honk you or bombard you with lights if you are slow or whatever.
There is a LONGGGGGGG way to go.
As I said earlier :))
Because we are going to drive one,, and tow the rest :))
Expats exceed the number of Citizens, Many Expat families own more than two cars, Which is contributing to the traffic jams, No one said an expat is driving two cars at once.
You misunderstood, he didn’t say he wants to limit families to two cars, he said he wants to limit individual expats from owning more than two cars. That’s why it doesn’t make sense. You also technically can’t limit a family to two cars, I can’t see how that would be possible unless you limit it to two cars per home PACI address. But even then that wouldn’t make sense because parents require a car and so do working children.
“u also technically can’t limit a family to two cars, I can’t see how that would be possible unless you limit it to two cars per home PACI address. “
don’t give them ideas.
though at least this makes a little more sense
Well let’s just talk about this for say 6 months, make some rules and follow them for 2 months and then scrap the plan altogether.
Mission accomplished – Scare the shit and confuse everyone
Remove the Segregation of expatriates, and make it a rule for all and we will follow. There is no difference between Kuwaitis and “Foreigners” in this formula. You want more parking spaces and less traffic, create a system where if you carpool you are rewarded, and if you abuse the system you will be heavily penalized. No segregation, everyone is included…
What are we? Every other country in the 21st century?
No sir, we like our laws to have segregation. Don’t like it? GTFO.
*sarcasm*
Mark, I presume they mean registering 2 cars in the name of one person, since right now now you can register many cars under one person’s name. It still won’t solve the traffic problem
Loooool.. Mark you are right and you are really funny. 😀
I drive 3 cars at the same time, Telekinesis.
It is easy to drive multiple cars. Just get into the first one and drive it down the street. Get out of that one and get into the other, drive it down the street as well and then repeat as many times as you want.
Jokes aside. There is many issues in Kuwait that need to be fixed aside from the number of cars. Infrastructure is being rebuilt but have you tried driving close to Murooj where you get back onto the 6th ring road. Had to prevent getting hit twice from entering the lane as there is no room to enter the road without either being knocked by the car beside you or from behind you.
If we wanted we could also talk about the postal service (A very basic service offered in most of the countries around the world).
It is hard to say that this country cannot get their system in order when even 3rd world countries e.g. India have mastered the service of delivering the lunch in the aluminum tins to where it has to go with very low room of error. This is just one example. In Brazil they have a separate lane for bicycles and bikes is another example.
No one understands what is going wrong but eventually this will be resolved one way or another.
If you have a fleet of self driving teslas it could work as well
Wow that would be cool. An entourage of cars. I wish the Cyber Truck was already out, then it would be awesome.
I am against this suggestion, because it seems that it is targeting people who abuse the system not people who own multiple cars and drive only one at a time.
For example, Kuwaitis and Expats alike may own multiple cars and rent them out illegally for delivery services and the driver is usually having a household residency.
Many of the drivers who deliver our orders are doing it illegally, ask a few and you will be surprised. I for one had an electrician who worked under a contractor I’ve contracted to do the electricity for a construction project. The electrician had a car and would drive it to the site with other electricians with him. Later during the project I found out from the contractor that the electrician is a house hold driver not having his residency on the company. His car is probably owned by a Kuwaiti (possibly his sponsor). They need to find a way to stop people (Kuwaiti or Expat) who abuse the system and not punish the rest of us.
To fix this problem, make gas more expensive and provide a good public transport system. If you can get to where you want to go withing 20-30 mins via public transport why even drive.
Second people who are not Kuwaiti and not making plans to leave or relocate within the next few years are wasting their time. Even among Kuwaitis there are levels from 1-8 why stay longer than you have to. The simple answer is people get comfortable even in the worst of places and Kuwait isn’t the worst place. It’s a very nice place that makes you too comfortable.
The only place you can ever feel comfortable is in your own land mate. You have hit something on the spot but very few actually want to listen (believe).
Can you elaborate more on that levels among Kuwaitis? is it identifiable on the official documents ? or just a social standing thing. if so how did everyone come up with levels specifically that it only reaches till level 8?
Basically there are in essence 3 levels of citizenship. It is noted on citizenship documents for purposes of voting and running in elections mostly.
The first level is article 1 citizenship which gives voting rights and running for parliament rights etc. Harder to revoke but still possible. Reserved only for original kuwaitis who lived in kuwait before 1920.
The second best level is article 7 paragraph 3 citizenship which means that you were born kuwaiti to a family that were naturalized in the past and were not original citizens of kuwait. Not really sure about voting rights or running for parliament.
The third level of citizenship is the remaining articles of kuwaiti citizenship which are 3,4,5,7(different from article 7 paragraph 3), and 8. These articles are for people who were not kuwaiti at birth but then became kuwaiti, meaning they were not natural born kuwaiti citizens at birth. Cant vote or run for elections etc.
To people who think the numbers mean anything like for example 3 is better than 4, while 4 is better than 5, this is incorrect. 1 is better than all articles, while 7 paragraph 3 is better than the other numbers. The numbers are completely random except for article 1 being the best of course.
Source: https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b4ef1c.html
is the status held by the “third level” of citizens transitable to children? or are the children and further descendants considered “second level”
I was always aware of original Kuwaitis (Article 1) and knew there were additional levels …. just not their detailsR
Exactly, the children of fathers who are “third level” will get “second level” citizenship. This is because they were born kuwaiti, not naturalized as kuwaiti like their fathers so they get second level but thats the highest they and further descendants can go, they cant get article 1 citizenship.
I wonder who will they turn to after the exodus of all Expats. Respected MP sir. make scientific laws for God sake. dont use expat formulas on everything and anything.
This rule doesnt make sense at all rather they should think of how to improve & increase public transport facility (such as Metro & Tram service ) in the city . If there is a limit for a person to own only 2 vehicles & that person wants a third vehicle he/she can just rent a car from a leasing company How does this solve the traffic problem ?
To directly answer your question Mark one doesn’t have to be very creative, an expat owning several cars isn’t expected to drive them all simultaneously, ever heard of a chauffeur Mark? i.e a Driver? Simply put there are two unnecessary assumptions in your understanding, the first one we’ve addressed here is that the same person owning the cars is the only person who drives them, where in fact the same person can own several cars and delegate several people to drive them simultaneously, a son, daughter, chauffeur, wife…etc, or any other person who cannot directly own a car for any reason, financial or legal or whatever.
The other assumption is that the only problem is ‘traffic jams’, which is not true, but understandable given the statement of the honourable parliament member, however other problems were implied in his statement, like the condition of many vehicles in Kuwait, I mean surely if people are limited in the number of cars they can own, quality of said cars should improve.
Another issue that would hopefully be addressed is the of the lacking parking spaces, especially in many of the dense areas in Kuwait.
And if I may address most of your readers’ comments, it’s a logical fallacy to always reject a proposal for a solution because another solution exists, sometimes context is necessary, sometimes judgment in isolation is preferable, especially if these multiple solutions can co-exist and complement each other, further helping with the problem, i.e. they don’t collide with each other.
With all the love, may you own a thousand cars 🌷
Your first paragraph doesn’t make any sense. The MP wants to limit individual expats to 2 cars, not families. So a wife would be able to have two cars in her name, and so would the kids plus the dad. What everyone is finding hilarious is the fact if you limit individual expats to 2 cars each it wouldn’t reduce traffic due to the fact we can only drive one car at a time. Also, how many expat families do you know with chauffeurs that you think it’s a big enough problem that its one of the main reasons behind our traffic. In the 40 years I’ve lived here I’ve never met an expat family with a chauffeur.
I totally Agree with mark only few expat families with a chauffeur either a GM of a company or a Diplomat.
On the hand you have an issue with some people are not working, they “only sign in” and leave and go out and about to malls & cafes causing traffic everywhere and then going back during rush hour again to sign out and causing even more traffic instead of staying at the office.
2- The majority of Local families refuse to use the school bus, and end up hiring two drivers to drop the kids or the dad requests to leave work early everyday to go and pick them up. ” NOT ALL THE MAJORITY
In the old days we all enjoyed the school bus back home, it was safe and secured with locals too when never had the segregation that is happening now.
One last thing , Roads with no lanes causing serious accidents and bad infrastructure. They have been working on the roads for 14hrs per day since the beginning of covid even during lock down and still not finished and leave the project half done , not even bothered to have lanes. Qatar is done with all the football pitches and ready for the world cup and we are still the same.
The traffic problem is not only related to the number of vehicles on the street, as it is manifold between MPW, which is responsible for developing the infrastructure to suit the number of vehicles, and the Traffic Department is responsible for controlling traffic and punishing those who drive without a driver’s license. also the Ministry of Municipality has a role in monitoring the construction and not licensing the buildings without providing sufficient parking spaces for the residents of those buildings. In an area like Hawalli, we can note the number of parking spaces is few when compared to the residents of the buildings in the area, We also note that there are a large number of parked vehicles violating traffic laws and obstructing traffic. The MP’s proposal may benefit in those areas, It is best applied to citizens and residents alike. in the end, these vehicles for transportation, not for collecting
I agree it is best applied for both citizens and residents, but why only residents in this case above? And even though expats make up 70% of the population, I’m 100% sure if this is applied to citizens as well, we will see this bill have a bigger impact. Not every expat easily gets more than 2 parking spaces at a residential building.
*Traffic increases exponentially
Other Countries: Let’s improve infrastructure. encourage public transportation, build metros, HOV lanes, streamline traffic light signals, wider roads, root cause analysis to prevent accidents
Kuwait: Let’s not give out driving licenses and withdraw existing ones from expats. Stop selling second cars to expats.
How about fix the roads? How about create a proper mass transit system? How about building some new bridges/highways etc? It’s always those darn expats. Those pesky little expats, taking something they’re not worthy of having… how dare those leeches work for a living and gain some income to support their families. How dare these parasites crowd the streets, the restaurants, and the malls!
Did you know that, because of expats, there’s a huge shortage of oxygen? We must deter them from breathing. Let’s tax them!!!!
When will Kuwait advance? When will we have politicians with vision be at the forefront? Do they want Kuwait to grow and prosper? Or do they only want to create divisiveness?
when you are out of ideas and innovation blame it on expats. Thats the policy.
I know of good ol’ concepts like using school buses to school and back, company transport (in vans/mini-buses) and car-pooling that work very well in many countries. A new one like odd/even car plates on road can help too.
Mark, He was probably triggered looking at some expat like yourself having more than 1 car
I agree with Mark. The existing public transport infrastructure needs to be upgraded/revamped. People should be given incentives to use the public transport, for eg. anyone using the public transport between 7:000 AM to 10:00 AM will be free and the top 10 monthly/weekly public transport users will get cash incentives, will go a long way in encouraging more people taking public transport.
At the same time strictly enforcing the traffic rules and applying penalties will make people drive properly and not encroach on exit points or at the traffic signals from all sides etc. and bringing the traffic to a standstill. Instead of going after expat vehicles, rules such as suspension of license on more than 3 traffic violation will go a long way in putting things in order.
If real change is desired then the well being of everyone should be considered over personal benefit or benefit to a certain community and only that will bring change and only that will bring real implementable polices.
This would impact the 1% of the expat population (like Mark). Maybe even less than 1%. So the real effect of this is only to have debates and keep the discussion on expatriates going.
The real problem is what is already happening on the ground regarding driving license renewals. Now that is affecting the majority of the expats.
I have 6 cars in 3 countries. Does this apply to me ?