Poor Pyramids

[Ebikatsu]

Well it's taken another 15 years but the Ring Road has now been officially inaugurated by the 'Big Pharoah' himself this week.

Huge tent, lot's of 'back slapping', 3 helicopter pads purely for the visit then dismantled!, untold disruption to Giza traffic whilst they banqueted and bowed and scraped in sycphantic unison.

Still the pyramids at Giza are threatened by massive pollution from the new Remaya Junction.

All that money and 'not a jot' of difference to the health of the plateau!

The incompetence and lack of realism is overwhelming.




Egypt threatened over roads `vandalism' near pyramids

NICHOLAS SCHOON

Monday, 19 December 1994



The UN's culture and heritage arm is accusing the Egyptian government of vandalism and bad faith because of its treatment of the world's most famous ancient monuments, the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx.

Unless President Hosni Mubarak orders a complete re-think on the route of the Cairo ring road, Unesco will threaten to scratch the Great Pyramids and other nearby ruins off the list of World Heritage sites.

"That is the only sanction we have," Said Zulficar, a senior official with the organisation, told The Independent. Since these sole survivors of the seven ancient wonders of the world are the most august monuments on a list including Stonehenge and the Acropolis, the hope is that this threat will shame the Egyptians into action.

The 66-mile ring road is nearing completion. It runs right through the officially designated World Heritage site, less than two miles south of the three Great Pyramids and the Sphinx. The road's construction may already have covered tombs, and is attracting chaotic development which is likely to leave the pyramids encircled by urban sprawl by the year 2000.

President Mubarak has already ordered a suspension of construction work on the section of road nearest the 4,700-year-old pyramids. This followed a plea from Unesco's director-general after an article in The Independent last October which exposed the threat. But the authorities have now come up with an even worse solution, in Unesco's eyes: to route the road two miles further to the south.

There, it will still run right through the World Heritage site and threaten buried tombs and ruins around the Abu Syr and Zawiyat al Aryan pyramid fields. Although these pyramids are not as impressive as nearby Giza's they also date back to the Pharoahs'Old Kingdom, from 2,700 to 2,200 BC.

Last week Unesco's Spanish director general, Frederico Mayor, wrote to President Mubarak demanding that the ring road be re-routed north of the Great Pyramids.Unesco's World Heritage committee met in Thailand this month and passed a resolution voicing its concern. Egypt did not send a representative, but Professor Mohammed Nur El Din, chairman of the government's Supreme Antiquities Council, sent a letter suggesting that a tunnel under the site would solve the problem.

Dr Zulficar, Unesco's director of operations for heritage and an Egyptian, has paid four visits to the site this winter. "I was shocked and horrified at what I saw," he said. He found the dual-carriageway ring road was virtually complete. It is carried on a high embankment 200 yards wide. There were other, smaller new roads and two large rubbish dumps, one inside the World Heritage site and one just outside. He also found army camps and, in the "buffer zone" surrounding the site a new complex of flats for 15,000 people.

Development should be strictly controlled in the buffer zone and banned altogether inside the site, apart from the most exceptional circumstances. At the site's southern end, Dahshur, a military factory continuously belches out thick black smoke. Dr Zulficar believes this pollution threatens the mud bricks which make up the pyramids there. He said Egypt was in breach of the World Heritage convention, which underpins the listing of sites, and its own heritage law, passed in 1983. "You can't chop up thissite just as if it's a salami," he said.

But what upsets him most is what a young archaeologist from the Supreme Antiquities Council told him. In 1986 the SAC, statutory guardian of Egypt's heritage, gave its permission for construction of the ring road after salvage excavations had shown therewere no remains in the construction area.

Not so. The archaeologist, who Dr Zulficar will not name, said he had been told to make borings every 300 metres along the route, being given no labour and only one week in which to report his findings. So he simply said nothing had been found. And the SAC never told Unesco it had given permission. Subsequently two sarcophagi, mummies and pottery from Egypt's Roman period had been found close to the almost complete road. Dr Zulficar said the authorities were angry at Unesco's intervention, and complaine d that re-routing the road would cost an extra $50m (£32m).

Less than 20 years ago the Great Pyramids were well outside Cairo. Now the city presses up against their eastern and northern flanks, with blocks of flats a couple of hundred yards away. But to the south there is open desert. If the ring road is built tothe south the city's explosive population growth virtually guarantees the Great Pyramids will be engulfed.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 90116.html



Monday, August 31, 2009

Mubarak Inspects Public, Service Projects

/>President Mubarak has stressed the need for providing a safe network of roads and bridges in Egypt in order to create new nearby development projects and to create more job opportunities. <br> <br> This came in a statement by the President during the inaugurating the Mariotteya axis of the Cairo ring-road on 30/8/2009, which represents a strategic artery and one of the most important transportation projects in the past twenty years. <br> <br> President Mubarak stressed the need for cutting down the time schedule for carrying out road and bridge projects in order to ease the sufferings of citizens, and he stressed the need for undertaking periodical maintenance so that they may work efficiently. <br> <br>

Linking the eastern and western parts of the Cairo Ring-Road, the Mariotteya axis was built in 26 months. It has four travel lanes and a 5.8 km length.


Welcoming President Mubarak, Giza governor, Sayed Abdel-Aziz, reviewed ongoing projects being implemented in the governorate.

"Work is underway to implement the Ahmed Orabi extension to help ease the traffic on the July 26 axis." said Abdel-Aziz. "Efforts are also going on to establish the Saft el-Laban axis linking the Ring Road to Tharwat Bridge in Giza." he added.

The governor said the work is also in full swing to establish a pedestrian tunnel in Giza Square.

"Upon President Mubarak's directives, we are paying utmost attention to implementing utilities and infrastructure projects," he said.

The governor also said that the sanitary drainage network was then covering 98 percent of the Giza governorate.

"The road network is also growing and by the end of the year, the whole governorate will be linked to the Ring Road," he added.

Minister of Transportation Eng. Mohamed Mansour reviewed his ministry's plan to develop the belt-road which links five governorates. He said the Ministry is establishing a network of highways in Delta to a length of 225 kilometres and aggregate costs of L.E. 17.8 billion. He said that work was underway in 677 kilometres of that network at total costs of L.E. 11 billion. Explaining progress of work on underground metro project, the Minister said that 60 per cent of construction works has been carried out, adding the first stage of the third underground metro line would end in October 2011 and the second stage would end two years later.

Minister of Transportation Mohamed Mansour gave a statement praising the unprecedented progress realised by the transportation sector over the past few years in implementation of President Hosni Mubarak's directives.

Mansour presented a documentary on the transportation sector achievements and pointed to Egypt's 46,000 kilometre road network, adding that special attention is currently being given to roads in Upper Egypt.

He reviewed the ministry's plan in the coming stage and steps of developing the Cairo-Alexandria desert road at costs amounting to L.E. 2 billion during the first phase.

"The ministry is establishing four axes to link Delta with Upper Egypt and eight ones to link the Nile Valley with Red Sea governorates." said Mansour, referring to investments reaching L.E. 3.5 billion compared to only L.E. 251 million in 2003.


The ministry signed a protocol with the National Bank of Egypt to promote investments in highways.

Mansour said the ministry has succeeded so far in implementing 77% of the electoral program of President Mubarak, which aims at the construction of 3,000 kilometres of roads.

He described the Mariotteya Ring Road inaugurated Sunday as one of the most important roads in Egypt. It is expected to accommodate 600,000 vehicles daily.

The Minister reviewed the latest developments in the construction of the third line of underground metro in Greater Cairo which runs for 34 kilometres, saying around 60% has so far been accomplished.

"The third line will accommodate around two million passengers, while the capacity of the first and second lines together is only 2.5 million." he added.

Minister of Housing, Ahmed al-Maghrabi, expounded the Mariotteya axis-road saying it was established over 26 months by the hands of 11,000 engineers, technicians, workers and drivers.

"It links the Ring Road's eastern and western parts." Maghrabi said.

The Ring Road aims at easing traffic on main roads and encouraging the development of new urban communities.

The Minister praised the great cooperation by the various ministries and concerned bodies especially the traffic department and the ministries of Interior and Irrigation during the construction of the project.

"The important project is one of many development ventures the president is keen on opening all over the country." he concluded.


http://www.sis.gov.eg/En/EgyptOnline/Po ... 010595.htm

[Horus]

Like many things in life, we in the West cannot really criticise the decision of other poorer countries to improve the lot of its own people, if this involves a new road system then who are we to protest.
Although it is regrettable that Egypt does seem to lack a cohesive plan when it comes to modernisation and protecting the ancient monuments. Luxor springs to mind as a typical example, it seems like full steam ahead to destroy anything that stands in the path of the grand plan.

[Ebikatsu]

Thing is Horus the Egyptians as you know are addicts when it comes to building, but once it is built no one thinks to maintain it
The roads are shocking. They Tarmac and then allow cars over it when it is still wet??? Seriously we have to dodge cars that are driving up wet tarmac and spraying the tar all over other cars bodywork??????????????
No cones, no diversions, no signs.....it's madness.

What they should be doing is scrapping all the 'old clunkers' (like that phrase) that are lying in streets blocking roads that have been there for decades.
Scrap all the old sardine can's, and get all the crap off the roads. If they just done that they would reduce the traffic by 50% or more.

There's no difference at Remaya.

God knows how many vehicles an hour pass within 200yds of the pyramids