Every now and then, we hear about new innovative solutions to Lebanon’s worsening traffic problem, especially between Nahr el Kalb and Jounieh but it keeps getting worse and the solutions proposed eventually die out.

The most recent one is ROBUST, which stands for Rolling Bridge for Underground Systematic Tunneling, and is an innovative solution that consists of building tunnels while deploying rolling bridges in order not to cause road closures.

The solution was proposed by Engineer Marc Ballouz and is definitely a smart one but we all know that it will never happen in Lebanon where we can’t even fix a pothole without blocking the whole highway and where we can’t even plan works properly and finish them on time. My guess is if that project ever gets adopted, we will end up with rolling bridges becoming permanent ones and the tunnels will never be completed.

On another note, I think someone should start by fixing the inner Jounieh streets before the highway because they’re a nightmare even when they’re no one on the highway.