RTA 'Unleashes' another funny name

Big news kiddies! The RTA has ‘Unleashed’ their new journey planner – wojhati. I am not sure where they came up with the name, it probably means journey planner in Arabic, but I prefer to think its an acronym for Wookies Only Joke Heartily Aboard Transit, Ironically. Ironic, because Wookies are renowned for being stoic and hating transit - who knew they would joke once aboard? And what does this have to do with my journey?


I greatly enjoy the unleashings of the RTA, nothing is debuted or rolled out, its ‘unleashed’, like a virus on an unsuspecting public.

RTA's Official Unleashing Document

I have known about the journey planner for a while, I came across the page for it on the RTA website before I moved here, but unfortunately there were no links to the actual planner, nor any advice on when there might be such a link. The curious thing was the wording on the page made it sound like it was already up and running. There are many quirky things on the RTA’s website, it makes it kind of cute.

As soon as I saw the unleashing, I simply had to try out the journey planner. Would it give me the same advice as I had given myself? Would I be wowed by its amazing svengali-like ability to come up with bus route choices? I dropped everything I was doing (not much), and set about putting the program through its paces.

Good news! Wojhati is actually incredibly useful. In true RTA fashion, it has its funny little quirks, but I think it would stand up pretty well against the NYC MTA’s first attempt at a journey planner (though not quite as useful as say HopStop).

Once entering Wojhati-land, one enters the name of their origin and destination. Seeing as how Dubai lacks a street numbering system, this can be rather hit or miss. It all depends on how big the landmark you are starting or ending at is. Actually, it doesn’t even depend on that, I have no idea what it depends on since it was rather random. It recognized the Burjuman center, but somehow didn’t know where the Mall of the Emirates was. It knew where the Dubai mall was (despite not showing it on the map), but didn’t know where Jumeriah Beach Residence was (also not on the map curiously).

Luckily, you don’t have to only rely on typing in your origin and destination, you can also pick a point on a map! Very handy indeed for this crazy city we live in. As I mentioned above, the map is a bit random as well, none of downtown Burj Dubai exists, the marina isn’t built yet either. All of your older roads will be there, and anyone with a decent knowledge of Dubai should be able to locate their destination to within a few minutes walking – good enough for purpose.

Other options include; choosing your departure time and choosing transit modes (bus, abra, taxi and train (obviously not available yet)). There is an option to choose by fewest interchages, fastest journey, or least walking between interchanges. You can even choose your walking speed and maximum walking time between interchanges, very nice!

So how does it work? I would say pretty darn well. I checked out each of the bus routes that I already know from experience, and it came up with a very similar route and the suggested times were fairly accurate. It did have some funny choices at times, like taking 5 different buses between JBR and the burjuman (via Jebel Ali!), but for the most part it was very rational, I think it’s the bus routes themselves, or more accurately the roads on which the buses travel, that are whacky.

Here is a sample route from the Burjuman to the Mall of the Emirates (by the way, I never noticed previously, its initials spell MOE! New nickname for sure). It’s a route I was curious about because I had tried to make the journey previously, and was thwarted by a pernicious lack of information (I ended up taking a cab). As noted before, Wojhati hasn’t heard of the mall of the Emirates, despite it being labelled on the map, so I had to right-click on the map and echo-locate it myself (I find echolocation quite easy, I have been half dolphin since that unfortunate accident at Fermilab).

Wojhati's magical mystery buses

Once you identify your start and end locations, just click submit and Wojhati does its magic thingy and comes up with not one, but SIX, count ‘em, six different routes to MOE, unfortunately, no routes to Curly or Shepp.

As you can see, not all the routes are super handy, generally I try to avoid 4 interchanges in one bus journey, but it might be fun for the intrepid, or if you have a lot of dirham coins laying around that you don’t know what to do with. I am a smart and change-poor man, so I chose the two bus option.

Details, details...

If you click on details, you get a page with all sorts of interesting journey info including interchange locations, journey leg times, interchange walking distances etc. You can also choose between an interactive (scaling) map of the route and a pdf of the route, which both include transfer location info.

pdf version of route map

There are also some other helpful features: Departure Board, Timetable, Stop Timetable, My Timetable, and My Journey. They are all variations on a theme, basically giving you all of the possible times for different journeys or routes (where-as when you search Wojhati, it gives you a more narrow timetable). The Stop Timetable feature is quite handy for figuring out which buses leave from nearby. The My Journey feature requires you to log on and then you can set defaults for where you like to leave from and favourite journeys (I haven’t tried this out yet), which seems rather friendly.

All in all I have to say good job! To the RTA. This, more than anything before (except for buying all of those buses) should really help to get people to try out public transport. You definitely can’t beat the price, even with 5 interchanges its only 10 dirham to get from JBR to the Burjuman (even less if you are smart) – bargain mate!

Compare and Contrast

Two articles in the National today highlight the huge, NAY, cavernous disparity in thinking between the planners in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Whilst Abu Dhabi plugs along slowly, thinking through development and endeavouring to create a more liveable city, Dubai charges forward with several road widening / massive interchange building projects.

The headline for the Abu Dhabi story is, “Feet First into the Future”, which I quite like. A very friendly image.

The article admits that at the moment AD is not very attractive for pedestrians, but amazingly the city is actually trying to fix things (unlike some other emirates I know). The Urban Planning Council actually has this to say: “We want to improve …by creating better and more cohesive, more connected districts for people to live and work in.” They also mention trying to provide a way for people to get around sans auto which is quite refreshing. Future plans include, “shading on pavements using plants, arcades and tents. Streets will be made narrower in some areas to give more space to pavements and in some cases one lane will be designated for public transit.” Wowza!

But wait you say; Dubai has already started building a metro, and bought 1600 buses! While this is quite true, and very laudable, Dubai doesn’t seem to see the Metro and bus system as part of a holistic change in how the city operates. Sure, there will soon be a metro, but there will also soon be billions of Dirhams of new highways as we find out in our contrasting article from the National, “Dh1.4bn roads revamp for Dubai”

If Dubai was really serious about changing peoples habits and getting them out of their cars they would be taking a cue from Abu Dhabi and reducing the number of lanes of traffic when the metro opens rather than building gobs more highway capacity. Shouldn’t you make it MORE difficult to drive in order to convince people to take the metro? Where is the stick? Its all carrot here.

The incredibly disturbing thing to me is, they are about to dig up and interchange-ize the trade center round about. The one and ONLY remaining signalized intersection on the entire length of the great wall of Sheik Zayed Rd. I’ll wager that there is absolutely no pedestrian or bicycle facility planned for the new interchange, despite there being a huge number of pedestrians currently passing through the area and changing between buses there (I seem to be the only cyclist passing through, it isn’t exactly what I would call bicycle friendly at the moment, but at least its not a freaking huge interchange).

The article also mentions the new bypass between Garhoud bridge and the 312 road behind the trade center. I had been wondering what was going on at the intersection of Zabeel 2nd Rd and 312 Rd; there are quite a few new bridge piers running over through Zabeel park. I can’t quite figure out where the thing is going to land, but rest assured it will bring speeding berserk drivers who still think they are on a highway straight onto (the relatively safe) 312 Rd. Thanks a lot RTA!

I am pretty sure the RTA is following me around and making sure to completely mess up any of the halfway decent roads I have found to ride on. All in the name of relieving congestion! Here is some free advice to the RTA, there is absolutely no way to build your way out of congestion (other than building mass transit), study after study has shown increasing road capacity only leads to more traffic and more increases in road capacity. Dubai had the luxury of being able to learn from the rest of the developed world’s mistakes, but they seem to have cocked it up royally and walked into all the same traps that the US did. Now they are stuck with endless miles of suburbs and massive traffic clogged highways.

Perhaps I should look into moving to Abu Dhabi.

In the long run

I’ve been hittin’ the bricks lately (and the sands and the asphalt) for some sweet long runs. I am trying to get the mileage up before the brunt of the heat shows up and makes it less than appealing to go for a 3 hour run. I am also testing out different routes out of the city as part of an opening leg for a run across the desert!

Yes indeed, from the wacky mind that brought you cycling to work comes a new adventure… running to Dibba!! This idea may or may not have something to do with my recent perusal of Arabian Sands by Wilfred Theisger (which is a great read by the way, highly recommend it). That, and I need a serious challenge now and again to give myself purpose and basically to spice up life.

I am hoping the trip can be made unsupported, that is, we carry our own equipment the whole way and camp at night (i.e. fastpacking). Water and food could of course be picked up along the way, but I am trying to avoid the need for an automobile trailing behind waiting to rescue or restock us. I figure we could get across the desert section in 2 or three days, and depending on route choice the mountain section in another 3 to 4 days. I’ve got some feelers out to my running buddies in London and NY to see if they want to join in on the adventure.

Anyhow, in anticipation of my daring desert dash, I have started to explore the possible routes I could take out of the city. So far I have run out to the Dubai Outlet Mall (13.5 miles) and over to Al Awir (aka where the Explorer Off road directions to fossil rock start), which is just past the Dubai bypass road at Dubai - Hatta Rd (20 miles). Neither route is ideal, both involve multiple highway crossings and pass through large half finished developments, but each has its charms.

My route out to the Outlet Mall took me from Downtown Burj Dubai, under the mass of highway ramps that used to be Doha St. (where it will someday pass over the creek extension), across Al Khail Rd at Oud Metha Rd, up the Roadsters weekday haunt, around the Nad Al Sheba Palace (which was the loveliest part, nice trees!), across a patch of surprisingly undeveloped desert, under Emirates Rd, along all sorts of construction, under the Dubai Bypass Rd through the future Universal Studios and into the mall. More sussinctly, I followed the Dubai-Al Ain Rd a bit off to one side. In a word, boring (except that bit in the trees).

The wonders of modern technology - GPS watches!

I was going to take the bus home, but I had to meet a friend for drinks, so a taxi home it was. I don’t understand how this city can build these absolutely monster interchanges in one place and absolutely nothing in another. A small underpass would work just fine, but no, you have to drive about 10 minutes out of your way in the wrong direction in order to get home (adding 24 dhiram to the trip).

My run out to Al Awir was a bit more interesting. I basically started the same way, but from Nad Al Sheeba I peeled off following the power lines in an easterly direction. I had to hop over a couple of fences and veer off course a bit to get over Emirates Rd, but otherwise it was the power lines service road most of the way. While running under power lines doesn’t sound very exciting, it is at least a small respite from the masses of development around you, and the footing is pretty good too. Once you get past the Dubai Bypass Rd the desert properly opens up, very pretty and loads of camels (none of which would agree to give me a ride)! As a bonus, the bus heads out to Hunaywah as well (the 11A), so on my next big run I can start there and head further into the desert!

Body and Mindless

Last week Time Out Dubai did a full page spread on cycling. While this is positive, its always good to promote cycling (especially here), I was worried that it was going to be a re-hash of the same old themes. I of course was not disappointed.

I had heard about the article from my better half, so I had a chance to predict what it would talk about before reading it. Here was my prediction: blah, blah, blah, ride in safe neighborhoods, blah, blah, blah, Roadsters, blah, blah, blah, Hot Cog. Miraculously I even got the order right!

Even though I had successfully predicted the future (except the Hot Cog part, though they did mention mountain biking), I wasn’t happy. How difficult is it to throw in a paragraph about using your bicycle for something constructive, like, I don’t know, say going to the store or work? The whole article was a giant puff piece for Wolfi’s Bike shop, which makes it even odder. Wouldn’t Wolfi want to sell bicycles to commuters as well? He mentions that he rides here more than in Germany, but pins that on the weather. To me that infers that he only rides his bike to train, and doesn’t use it to commute. What bike shop owner drives everywhere?

The most over the top quote had to be, “I ride in the Lakes…People in those areas are more used to cyclists than in say Deira or Bur Dubai.” Are you serious? I am wondering if Wolfi has ever been down to these neighborhoods, because this is the only area I EVER see cyclists. Perhaps he doesn’t count the thousands of guys from India and Pakistan riding their Goldline Super Extra bikes. I guess you aren’t a ‘cyclist’ unless you rub a massively expensive road bike from Wolfi’s showroom.

He also seems to like riding through the Springs and the Meadows because they have lots of speed bumps. Despite speed bumps being the bane of my existence, this seems to contradict his argument that motorists are much friendlier in these developments. These are the same people who are driving in Bur Dubai, they aren’t any friendlier in the Springs, they’re just worried about their suspension.

None of the ideas in the article (except the quote) are necessarily wrong. If you would like a nice quiet ride and happen to live in the Springs, good on ya! If you want to go for a long road ride, the roadsters are a great place to turn. It just seems so freaking strange that no one in this city will admit in print that its possible to ride your bike outside of these narrow definitions. Its as though there is a leash law and the springs and the Roadster rides are the only dog runs.

The indignity of Bicycle Commuting in Dubai

Indignity

In*dig"ni*ty\, n.; pl. Indignities. [L. indignitas: cf. F.
indignit['e]. See Indign.] Any action toward another which
manifests contempt for him; an offense against personal dignity; unmerited
contemptuous treatment; contumely; incivility or injury, accompanied with
insult.

How might a prince of my great hopes forget So great
indignities you laid upon me? --Shak.

First off, I’d like to make an apology to BikeSnob NYC for stealing his blog headline. It is just so apropos, I couldn’t resist. I invite him to come out to Dubai and try out the commute so we can have an indignity-off. I do believe I would win!

I’ve been commuting to work by bicycle in Dubai pretty much every day for 2 months now, which makes this a good time to sit back and reflect on how things are going. To compare my perceptions with the cruel realities and pleasant surprises, as well as to look forward and see what lies ahead.

I have enjoyed my commutation so far. It is relatively safe (I am not yet dead), quite quick (20 to 25 min depending on lights and my energy levels), and I very much enjoy feigning indifference to the people who stare at me unbelieving in the elevator as I stand there sweating with my helmet in hand.

Sure there have been times when I didn’t feel much like riding, but I don’t really have much of a choice. OK, there is the bus, but the bus isn’t anywhere near as convenient as my bicycle for my particular commute – yesterday it took an hour and 10 minutes to make the same 10k trip (only 50 min home though!), and thus it is only to be used in times of illness (like this week) or serious laziness (I am very much looking forward to being lazy on the metro). On the plus side though, you can read on the bus!

In terms of speed, Dubai has my previous commutes beat hands down. I rode approximately the same distance in London and it took at a minimum 10 minutes longer due to lights and traffic. So there apparently is a plus side to the gigantic roads and lack of rational spacing between traffic lights! The downside is that the road geometry seems to engender some sort of animalistic, brain stem originating need for some people to go as fast as mechanically possible between spaced out traffic lights with little regard for the personal safety of others. This need is prevalent everywhere, but most cities have a fairly dense grid of streets and thus traffic signals to somewhat deter the whackos.

The whole speeding from red light to red light thing never ceases to amaze me. I am sure a large majority of commuters drive the same route every day, yet they never seem to realize that no matter how fast they drive they won’t make the next light. I can actually run the length of the Boulevard at Burj Dubai faster than the cars (even stopping at the lights!), yet people constantly rev their engines and roar away from the light, only to hit the next red light. Is it done out of frustration or just pure idiocy?

I have an idea for pointing out the lunacy of peoples behaviour behind the wheel. I would make up cue cards, one or two for each light on the boulevard. The first would lay out the premise, something like, “You’re all nobs” “I will beat you” “to the end”, then at the next light, “why do you gun it?” “resistance is futile!”, then at the end “see, told you so” and “chill out mo fos”. Or something along those lines. I might need to hire a script writer for some better zingers. I figure I could easily amuse myself for an hour whilst getting a good workout.

While there are tons of nobs out there, there are also quite a few people who actually drive fairly reasonably, and quite a few are actually nice – slowing down and giving me some room when passing. Unfortunately those aren’t the people that stick in your brain; it’s the nobs you remember. The nobs not only being the ones who gun it at lights, but the ones who pass to close at high speed, cut you off at turns and honk as though you don’t belong on the road. Just a few bad apples sometimes spoil the whole bunch, cliché, but true. I have had days where I was absolutely thrilled to bits by vehicular behaviour, and then BAM, I got nobbed! Just ruins the whole ride, filling my mind with nothing but hate and vitriol for the remainder of my journey.

As a cyclist there is really very little you can do to vent your anger and get the point across that someone’s driving is at best annoyingly self centred, and at worst incredibly dangerous. I’ve done my fair share of shouting, gesticulating wildly, and my personal favourite – open palmed car slapping (makes lots of noise, but no damage), but these methods usually tend to further enrage the motorist, who most likely already thinks you shouldn’t be taking up space on ‘their’ roadway.

Curiously though (and to my advantage), the same roadway infrastructure that engenders an epidemic of nobbish speeding also tends to create massive waits at traffic lights. This long wait time normally gives me plenty of time to catch up with motorists who have just sped by me in an unsafe manner. Now, I could use this ‘face time’ with the nobs to mount a confrontational attach by launching into a tirade about their inherent lack of driving skills and the danger they have brought to bear upon me (I still sometimes do this, anger is a beast), but instead, I have chosen PLAN B.

In an effort to actually make some sort of impact I have decided to ‘try’ to be as civil as I can when approaching motorists and unleash PLAN B. I ask them to roll down their windows, and I whip out a copy of the ‘Safety Tips and Rules of the Road’ from the ‘RTA Pedestrian and Cyclist Design Manual’ on which I have helpfully highlighted the salient points of motorist / cyclist behaviour that they (el nobbitos) always seem to forget. Drop me an email if you would like a more legible copy!

Official Dubai RTA Anti-nob legislation

The most salient points being:

1. When approaching a bicycle keep on the lookout and slow down. Give them plenty of room.
2. Yield to bicycle riders at intersections the same as is done for other types of vehicles.
3. Do not crowd bicycles. Wait for a clear stretch of road before passing a bicycle that is moving slower than your motor vehicle in a lane too narrow to share…the greater the speed difference between you and a bicyclist, the more room you should allow when passing.
4. Do not honk at a bicyclist… There may be good reason for a bicyclist to ride in the travel lane, such as roadway hazards not visible to motorists.

I have only had one verbal altercation when attempting to educate the motoring public with my fliers. The vast majority of drivers are apologetic when approached, and are careful to give me much more room when they pass again. I’ve even cornered bus drivers (the bendy buses tend to crowd)! All but one motorist has been quite receptive, and that one time I cracked and reverted to yelling and screaming – thus turning myself into a nob. Must be contagioius.

From my experience, I would say most nobbish behaviour tends to orbit around points 1 and 3, with point 4 coming in a close third. I am also guessing that the persistent honking I encounter is cultural, you don’t see it much from the western expats, but the sub-continental drivers seem to use it as some sort of echolocation system. As though they were half dolphin, half nob.

I realize that my quest to de-nobitize the motoring public of Dubai one by one is a rather Quixotic quest, but in the end, if I manage to perhaps sway a couple of people to drive in even a slightly safer fashion I feel I have achieved something. I have also managed to bathe myself in a calming PLAN B salve which soothes away the hate and vitriol, and that in itself is worth the effort.