At nine minutes and nine seconds passed nine (09:09:09) on the evening of 9 September 2009 (9/09/09), His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, inaugurated the Dubai Metro and took the first journey on the new Red Line. In just 10 years the driverless public transport system has become a marvel of the world and an integral part of Dubai life for residents and tourists commuting around the city.
As Dubai celebrates 10 years of Dubai Metro operation, here are 10 facts you may or may not know about the Dubai Metro.
- Dubai Metro opened with 10 stations on just the Red Line but now has 49 stations across 2 lines, the Red Line and Green Line
- The Green Line was opened exactly two years to the day after the Red Line
- A third line, the Route 2020, will open in 2020 with a further 7 stations and 14.5 kilometres of track
- The current length of the operational Dubai Metro lines combined is 75 kilometres
- The Red Line at 52.1 kilometres in length is the world's longest driverless single metro line
- The total journey time from one end of the Red Line to the other is maximum 70 minutes and from one end of the Green Line to the other is maximum 40 minutes
- One third of all pubic transport journeys in Dubai are made on the Dubai Metro, more than any other form of public transport, including Dubai taxis
- Burjuman is the busiest Dubai Metro station, witnessing over 6 million passengers in the first 6 months of 2019
- Over 204 million passengers used the Dubai Metro in 2018
- 1,500,000,000 passenger riders have used the Dubai Metro in its first 10 years
