Moroccan Culture Series
Transportation within Casablanca

There are basically four ways to get around Casablanca: car/taxi, moped, bus, and on foot.

The most popular is obviously cars - there seem to be millions of them in Casablanca. They are absolutely everywhere, and they pollute like mad. In addition, perfectly lovely people turn into animals behind the wheel. Driving in Casa is apparently a test of how quickly you can get from point A to point B and how many people - inside and outside of your car - that you can terrify on the way, whether or not you need to be at point B at any particular time.

Horns blare constantly - at all hours of the day and night. In addition to expressing irritation for any sort of delay or getting cut off, drivers honk at pedestrians 

• when coming up behind or next to them
• to indicate irritation that pedestrians are crossing the street in front of them even though they're a block away
• to tell pedestrians to move faster when crossing the street

What annoys me the most, though, is at stoplights. The second that the light turns green, everyone honks at the cars in front of them. They must sit at the light with their hand trembling on the horn. My husband insists that part of the reason for this is that at some intersections, the first car can't see the stoplight, but the honking happens even when the light is visible to the first car, so that excuse doesn't work for me.

Once in a while there's a minor traffic jam in the street below our apartment, and the horn blaring doesn't cease until everyone is moving again, which sometimes takes 10 or 15 minutes. I find this utterly astonishing: when it is obvious that no one in front of you can move, what good does blowing your horn do? Bad as this is, drivers are even more awful during Ramadan. Once a car was blocking traffic while trying to park, and people were actually getting out of their cars and taxis in order to yell at him.

There are two kinds of taxis

1. Grands taxis are old Mercedes that will take you to another town for 40 or 50 dirhams ($4-5). The reason it is so cheap is because you ride with another 5 passengers squeezed in with you (4 people in back and 2 plus the driver in front.
2. Petits taxis are tiny economy cars like Fiats and Peugeots and are color-coded by city (red in Casa, beige in Marrakesh, blue in Rabat, etc). They should* never cost more than 15 dirhams to take you from one end of town to the other.

* The taxi drivers at touristed places (the mosque, train and bus stations, etc.) rip off tourists by not using the meter, which is both illegal and a sin against Islam. They will claim an outrageous price like "only 200 dirhams" for a five-minute taxi ride, counting on tourists' gullibility, unfamiliarity with Moroccan money, and eagerness to get where they are going. Thus you should always find a taxi in the street, not at a taxi stand. Make a point of looking at the meter when you get in to be sure that the driver resets it. If he doesn't, ask if it works. Maybe 1 in 15 drivers will say that it is broken; when this happens, just tell him to stop and get out of the taxi. There are thousands upon thousands of taxis - it is very easy to find one who won't cheat you. Most drivers are very friendly and are always delighted when we exchange a few words of Arabic with them.

Mopeds are everywhere too, and their riders use their horns just as gratuitously as car drivers. They also weave in and out of traffic, go through red lights, and zoom by pedestrians with no more than inches to spare. It's quite scary.

Both cars and mopeds seem to consider pedestrians a particularly disgusting creature. They ignore crosswalks and often speed up when they see you crossing in front of them. I don't know what the laws are, but I have a feeling that if a car or moped hit me in the crosswalk (and this has come close to happening more times than I care to think about), it would be considered my fault. Crossing the street is an extreme sport in Casablanca.

My husband and I walk most places, and take taxis maybe twice a week. We haven't yet taken a bus, because they are always full to bursting with people. Forget standing room only; the people on the buses appear to be lucky that parts of their bodies aren't hanging out the window. We do intend to take a bus ride one of these days, just to see what it's like, but aren't particularly looking forward to being crammed in like sardines.

There are few bicycles in Casa. Marrakesh has quite a lot, and even has a bike lane on one road, which I found astounding.

In smaller towns and out in the country, cars give way to donkeys pulling carts upon which people, vegetables, or other goods are piled. The donkeys invariably look half-starved and are treated very poorly. Calling someone a donkey is one of the worst insults in Moroccan Arabic.

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