In two months time the Dubai Metro will hopefully open and I dare say that I have positive expectations of it (I know, I’m losing my touch). The whole concept of being able to buy a pass and go from abra to bus to metro is somewhat first worldish, and hopefully it works out well. It will also change Dubai for a lot of people in that they’ll be able to finally walk somewhere (can’t wait to do some street photography)

When the idea of the Metro was first being toyed with I didn’t think it sounded realistic, and pretty soon it was being built quite quickly and now it’s nearing completion (at least the first route anyway). So I think I have to tip my hat and give some positive thinking towards it.

It’s really one of those things you’ll be able to witness so few times throughout your lives, will people really ditch their cars for the metro? will the roads here suddenly empty up a bit? will I no longer have to refer to Sharjah as roflsharjah just because of the traffic and avoid driving there? Obviously only time will tell, and although I think the fares are really low enough that people will change from cars to metro eventually, though I would suggest the RTA find some way of offering people who sell their cars 6 months of free metro travel just to get things going and to get more and more people out of traffic/parking/etc.

Personally I will probably use the metro to go to a few places around town, but for going to Shisha or anything late at night it doesn’t really work out as the service stops at midnight, somehow I don’t really think the midnight closing time fits in with socialising in Dubai (on weekends) as many people stay out late. Fortunately, there is a metro station close enough to my house that I could walk there in winter so I really hope it’s as accessible as I hope it will be.

The RTA has some other cool stuff coming up like bicycle tracks and hopefully they’ll fulfill what they’ve been saying for a while and actually produce a drivers handbook, stop people with tinted windows, get people to use indicators, stop war for the rest of eternity, defeat Etisalat and perhaps even get this Metro thing to be a success.

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