Driving in Muscat

Driving in Muscat is interesting, to say the least.  I mostly ride.  Some say that you cannot drive a non-rental car here without your residency card.  Others will say that you have a grace period of 3 months (this may be determinate upon which country you come from as well).  But since this is a gray area, I use caution and my crutch of being scared as excuses to be the passenger.  Being the passenger has allowed me to be more observant and take pictures of the oddities I encounter.  But that all ends soon as I should be getting my license this week.

Let’s start with the roads.  They are well-paved unless you are off-roading (a common pastime here).  We stick to the roads.  The roads are not straight.  Muscat is not laid out on a grid.  At.  All.  It follows the coast-ish.  Every single road curves.  There are many roads you can only get on if you come from the correct direction which could force you to make a couple of u-turns to get to the road you want to be on.  And forget back tracking to get to where you started.  I heard a story this weekend about it taking 11 minutes to get to the store on the other side of the highway.

Note the road, the white dashed line, the un-needed curve, and the sidewalks on both sides.

Waze blessedly works here in that it gives you turn-by-turn directions that Google Maps and Apple Maps cannot provide.  However, it won’t know if a road has been closed either temporarily (understandable) or permanently (less understandable).  For instance, it tried to make us use private (possibly residential) roads to get to Qurum Park once.  Instead, we had to go back the direction we came, down towards the sea, and around the large park to enter from the other end.

Street lines are not often repainted soon enough.  There is one major road near us that is 3 lanes wide at one point with no visible lines.  My assumption is that it is 3 lanes wide.  I guess that could be wrong.  You just go in the approximate area you think your car should be.  To be honest, this is how some drivers here drive.  Think fish swimming up stream.  If they take your spot, you just move over.  Another street line note:  yellow lines are not used to separate to and fro traffic.  It’s just a white line.  

Speed bumps are used everywhere to slow you down.  On a long curve to get onto a highway (no need to get up to speed, right?), near schools, or really anywhere they want people to go slower.  Beware of the speed bumps that need to be repainted!  They blend in with the ground.

Note the speed bump (that needs to be repainted) and the well-painted arrows.

Omani drivers come in two types.  There is the chill type that will flash their lights to let you in, and there is the uptight type that will honk as soon as the light has turned green.  There is no way to tell which you will encounter.  The honkers will speed off as soon as they can.  Good riddance. 

One reason they may honk at green lights is because you have warning before the light turns green.  A few years ago, they really started cracking down on people running red lights.  So the green light will flash green before it turns yellow then red giving you extra warning that you need to stop.  From red, the yellow light will turn on with the red before the green light turns on.  It’s odd, but I kind of like it.  And when you do find yourself at a stop light, be prepared to wait.  Each direction gets their turn one at a time, so if you stop for the red light, you will be waiting for the traffic coming towards you, the traffic coming from the left, and the traffic coming from the right before it is your turn to go.

Maybe this is why they are fans of roundabouts?  Most of the roundabouts make sense; some of the larger ones seem more dangerous than helpful.  Luckily, we don’t encounter these too much.

Hope these tips help when you come to visit us.  You really will love it here!  And for more help, Andy in Oman blog had some good signs and descriptions.