Find Dubai Metro too crowded? More trains will be added soon

Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) is looking at an extension of its current fleet with approximately 25-35 additional trains, revealed Hassan Al Mutawa, Deputy Director of Rail Operations at the RTA.

Currently, the fleet of Dubai Metro consists of 79 trains, of which 61 operate on the Red Line and 18 on the Green Line.

With a rapidly expanding number of daily riders and an extension of both the Red and the Green Line, an expansion of the number of trains is inevitable.

“We do not want people to be squeezed into the Metro. In Dubai, a 5-star experience is expected,” Mutawa pointed out at the Mena Rail and Metro Summit.

“The metro trains were designed to carry 4 passengers per m². However, today we see that 6 or more people per m² board the metro, and this is not ideal.”

The number of Metro commuters is continuously on the rise. From January-September this year, 119,000 passengers were recorded, while last year the total number of passengers came to 138,000.

The daily average in 2013 was 138,000 passengers. On October 2 this year, Dubai Metro witnessed its highest number of passengers on a regular day, with 610,000 commuters hitting the trains.

“This was on a Thursday, heading into the holidays,” Mutawa added.

However, on special occasions this number can even be exceeded, Mutawa pointed out. “On Public Transportation Day, when people can ride the Metro for free, we witnessed 700,000 passengers and on New Year’s Eve the ridership hit 750,000.”

This year on New Year’s Eve, a million passengers are expected to ride the Metro.

The expansion of the Metro fleet is not the only method used to increase the capacity of the transportation system, Mutawa added.

“The headway of the trains is constantly altered, depending on the demand. We started with a 10-minute headway, it was 3 minutes for some time and recently we reduced it to 90 seconds at peak hours. This timeframe is constantly adapted.”

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