Sunday 22 / June / 2025
Muscat: Waterlogging and flooding on the Al Khuwair portion of Sultan Qaboos Street will come down drastically, following extensive roadwork to greatly improve its drainage capacity.
98 per cent of the sustainable solutions installed on that section of the highway have been completed by the Muscat Municipality.
To drain the water that accumulates on the road at a faster rate, primarily during rains, additional box ferries have been constructed.
The roadwork also includes upgrades to the service lane that runs parallel to the main road, as well as the refitting and reconstruction of the canals designed to carry water away.
“The number of lanes on the road has also been expanded to three,” said Abdullah Al Ameri, assistant director of the Roads Projects Department at Muscat Municipality. “This will help aid the diversion of traffic to and from Sultan Qaboos Street.
“The rehabilitation of the canal, located next to the main road, and on the other side of the commercial area in Al Khuwair, involving expanding its width to between three and five metres, increasing its depth by two metres, and extending its length to 945 metres,” he added.
“We have also built protective barriers for the canal, constructed a pedestrian walkway next to it, and provided additional box ferries to collect water from Wadi Al Khuwair when it is in flow.
“The canal has been built over used interlocking paving stones,” added the engineer.
“Work on this phase – the second stage – of roadwork began in October 2019, and it is expected that the rest of the related tasks will also be completed on time. Improvements on Sultan Qaboos Street involve changes to many services available there, taking into account the high density traffic on this road.”
The third phase of roadwork will involve raising the elevation of the main road, so that its placement is in accordance with the other improvements that have been done thus far. It also includes beautification and reforestation of the areas which have and will be subjected to construction and repair works.
“With the completion of these public works, we hope the problem of rainwater flooding on Sultan Qaboos Street, opposite the ministries district, will end,” said Al Ameri.
The first cluster of roadwork included the development of a water channel, measuring 1.15 kilometres in length, which begins in the ministries district and ends in the form of an outlet that pours the collected water into the sea. This was followed by the construction of a closed canal subdivided into three units about eight metres long and 1.5 metres high.
430 metres of the water channel are closed to the outside, while the remaining 685 metres – near the embassies quarter – are open.
“While setting up this project, the municipality took into account the need to develop plans to protect all of the service lines that cross the length of the canal and provide essential utilities,” said Al Ameri.
“This project began in the third quarter of 2017, and was one of the main works completed as part of the first phase, which ended in 2019.”
