So I ventured out today to travel on the Dubai Metro green line – granted that I did not travel at the peak time so I did not see if there was a mass of passengers using the green line during normal commuting hours. However, if the statistics are to be believed then over 100,000 people used the green line in the first two days of opening, which is quite a staggering number. When I used the green line, which was at about 11am, there were just a few handfuls of people travelling, no massive crowds.
I parked at the Etisalat Metro Station car park and I would say, from the 2,500 car parking spaces that the metro station has, that only a fraction of those were being used – my estimate would be 10-20% maximum. The car park has 3 floors and so plenty of space for commuters to park before travelling.
I suppose the thing with the green line is that it passes by huge residential areas – some of these areas of Dubai I had not really seen before and did not realise that there was such a large number of apartments. So this would mean that a lot of people would be within walking distance of the green line, or at least close to a bus route. This is itself should make the route popular with people who have to travel to work normally by car.
The good thing about the green line is that everything is up and running smoothly. All of the stations looked completely finished and there were only a few glitches and maintenance people that I could spot – some last minute finishing in the Etisalat car park and a couple of the escalators being mended or finished.
So the RTA have done a great job of finishing the green line and I expect it will get more and more popular with commuters as time goes on.
