Dubai Metro

On Wednesday 9/9/9 at 9 pm the Dubai Metro carried a trainload of sheikhs from Mall of the Emirate to Rashidia. I have no idea where Rashidia is, but I trust the sheikhs' drivers were able to find it to deliver the sheikhs' cars.

On Thursday, 10 Sept, meskins were allowed to ride, and I meant to be among those first riders, but on 9/9/9 at 11 pm, Farook insisted I join him for shisha and discussions of the Holy Koran, and I didn't get to sleep until 6 am, and wasn't up to taking the Metro. When I finally got up Thursday evening, I found an e-mail of what was captioned as the Thursday morning, 10 Sept, first public run of the Metro, and it was empty.

For the last 10 days of Ramadan, devout Muslims spend much of each night (especially the odd numbered nights of Ramadan) inside the mosque, so I was not shishaed out Friday night, and made it to the bus stop today. Two busses pick up travellers from my stop, one goes to Union Square (next to Al Ghurair Mall) and the other to Bur Juman Mall. The bus to Union Square came first, so I got on and read the local paper about how great the new Metro was.

The Union Square Station is underground (as is the station at Bur Juman, called the Khalid bin Waleed Station, since Bur Juman refused to pay to have its name on the station). I went to a machine, but the machine only recharges tickets, so I had to buy a ticket first. I stood in line until I reached the teller who said her computer wasn't working. So I had to get in another line and wait until I reached the next teller.

There are First Class tickets (called Gold Tickets) and Cattle Class tickets (called Silver Tickets) and I got a Gold Ticket. I wanted to put $25.50 on the ticket, but the teller only took $5.50 and gave me a ticket and $20 change. Of the $5.50, $2 was for the card, and $3.50 was for fares on the Metro or on Dubai buses.

They announced the next train, so I tried to race to the platform, but the station was congested, and I missed the train. By the time the next train arrived, there was quite a crowd on the Gold platform, and I was crammed into the already full train by the people behind me. Not only were all the seats filled, so were all the straps, so I couldn't even find a strap on which to hang. The Gold Car was the front half of the front car, so, had the front window not been completely filled with people, I would have had a great view of the Metro's progress.

We stopped at the Khalid bin Waleed station, where a large crowd was waiting, but there was no room. We skipped the next station (not yet finished) and stopped at Jaffiliya, which is where the Immigration Department is located. Again a crowd, and again no room.

We skipped a couple of stations then stopped at the Dubai Financial Centre, then skipped a few more stations, and finally ended up at Mall of the Emirates, where I pushed my way off the train. The Mall of the Emirates station is small, with only a few tellers and machines and long queues to use them, so I thought I'd recharge my card when I got back to the larger Khalid bin Waleed or Union Square Station.

I made a quick trip to Carrefour at the Mall, then went back to the train. A long queue was waiting to get on. When a train arrived, a few people managed to cram onto the already full train, and the queue moved slowly forward. Eventually, I was crammed into the Gold car, where, again, all seats and straps were already taken. Going back from Emirates Mall, the Gold car was the last half of the last car at the end of the train. If this was First Class, I can only shudder to imagine conditions in the Cattle Class (Silver) cars.

When I got back to Khalid bin Waleed Station (i.e., Bur Juman Mall), my card didn't have enough for the $4.50 round trip fare, but it let me out of the train with a $1 deficit. It's not clear why I really had to pay the deficit, but I paid it anyway, plus what I thought would be enough for the bus home.

However, when I used my Metro Card on the bus, no money was deducted. The newspapers had announced that, if one uses the Metro, the Feeder buses (labelled 'F' buses) are free, but I didn't take an F bus; however, it appears that, if your bus leaves from a Metro station, there's no additional charge to take the bus from the station to your final destination.

So my ride left me with one question (but two parts):

Once the novelty has worn off, will riders be able to find seats, or at least straps, a) in First Class? b) in Cattle Class?

I noticed that a lot of the riders had neither silver nor gold cards, but just one-day (or one-way, or single round trip) tickets, so many of the riders were strictly there for the novelty. Many drove to a station at one end of the line and purchased a round trip ticket to the station at the other end, and do not plan to use the Metro for commuting, they only wanted to ride it one time just to see what it was like.

And, of course, it was clear that the video of an empty train was taken Wednesday on a Press run where only card-carrying photo journalists were allowed, and, at least for the first weekend, it was not representative of an actual rider's experience.

So I'll be riding again in a week or so, to see how things are progressing.