Metro Bike Racks - Update!

This morning I saw the first of what I believe are the promised '30 bike racks' at each metro station. A little sleuthing turned up this post from the manufacturer of the racks. Apparently they were custom designed for the RTA. I haven't seen any at the financial center station yet, but hopefully soon!

Photo from Dero Bike Racks Website

The design looks pretty good, a place to put your front wheel to stabilize the bike, as well as a taller (and beefier) bar to lock the frame to. Let's hope the RTA rolls these out all over town, not just the metro stations!

State of the pedal update

It’s been a while since I have posted about cycling – one might think I had given up on it or something. As my loyal reader will note, I NEVER give up on cycling! I guess I have just been preoccupied with other topics lately. I suppose it’s time we had an update, so welcome to my ‘State of Cycling’ post.

The biggest news on the cycling front is the arrival (FINALLY) of my new (old) frame for my fixed gear bike. If you read my post about the multitudes of bikes in my proverbial stable you may remember I had a fixed gear bike converted from an old Yokota road bike my friend John had given me. I ended up riding it into the ground (figuratively, not literally), and fracturing the head tube – rendering it rather useless for riding. Subsequently I went on a fruitless odyssey looking for a replacement frame, only to find one when I wasn’t looking for it (who knew my replacement frame was in Australia?).

I originally bought the replacement frame last November, but due to a many factors, I didn’t actually receive it until I was in London on my re-secondment (I’ve never been seconded from a secondment before! Very meta). It was a looooong wait, but totally worth it. I love my new (old) bike, and ride it to work every day now here in Dubai (when I don't wuss out and ride the Brompton to the metro).

I am fairly certain I am the only person in Dubai rockin’ a fixed gear bike, please feel free to correct me if I am wrong on that point. I’m not exactly your standard fixed gear freestylin’ hipster (I even have trouble doing track stands), but I do really enjoy the ride and agree with all the other platitudes people use about fixies (you feel connected to the bike, feel the road, etc). Plus, the minimalism appeals to me.

Also on the bicycle blotter, I finally went out for a cruise with the Friday Morning Fanatics (AKA. Wolfi’s wolf pack, AKA the Roadsters). A friend from work caught the cycling bug (unfortunately not the commuter cycling strain) a couple of months back and had been nagging me to come along for a Friday ride. I’ve never had anything against the ride, I just never really wanted to get up that early (unless it was to run 20 miles into the dessert).

I think what finally changed my mind was a recent ride I did in Massachusetts while I was on holiday. The trip was planned around attending my friend John’s wedding (the same guy that gave me the Yokota which turned into my first fixie, the only man with more bikes than me). John is an incredible athlete (we used to Adventure race and hash together), and his new wife is also an adventure racer and all around athlete, so the days leading up to their wedding were a crazy sports carnival (and drink fest). There was yoga in the morning, then a mini adventure race, followed by a ‘grooms road ride’ on the morning of the wedding, then I went kayaking, followed by a run.

In case you are wondering, "why did you bring a bike 8000 miles to a wedding?" Well, we didn't fly them over, just rented the bikes in Boston and rode down to the wedding. Oh, and after the wedding we did a 3 day bike tour up through southern Mass and Cape Cod - sweeeeet! I must give big props to my better half, who managed to fit all of her wedding kit (including hair dryer) and clothes for a week and a half into two medium sized panniers - Boo ya ka!

The weather was horrible for the grooms road ride – sheets of rain were falling, and I hadn’t ridden in a pack for a while, but I had the best time on the ride. I’ve never been a huge roadie, but that ride made me want to come out and try one of the roadsters Friday flings.

I have a big problem with driving somewhere just to ride your bike, especially when it is just across town; so I decided to ride over and meet up with the pack as they passed Safa Park. The website said a group would usually wait there for the main group, and it was easier (and quicker) to get to than the lime tree. I arrived around 5:30 and saw a group waiting, it wasn’t long before another group rolled up and we rode off to the east.

My friend had mentioned there would be a rest stop at 40km in, so when 50km rolled by I started to wonder what was going on. I asked a guy next to me and he said this group actually leaves earlier than the regular group, only stops once rather than twice and rode about 130km. Hmmmm, seems I had joined the wrong group – no one had mentioned the earlier group, my friend or the website, honest mistake.

I figured I could easily do the distance, but I was slightly concerned about the pace. How right I was. After about 60k, and without much warning, everyone took off like rabbits. I hung on for a while, but didn’t manage to catch the pack and they slowly pulled away doing about 28mph (I was managing 26, close, but no cigar). In retrospect I should have dug a bit harder to pull back up to the back of the group as it is much easier to draft than fight it out on your own, but I was under the mistaken assumption that they were doing a relatively short sprint. Such is life.

After about 5 minutes I managed to lose sight of them completely, but was saved (or so I thought) by a lone straggler who I figured had fallen off the back as well. After 10 minutes of pushing hard I managed to catch up to the straggler, only to find out the guy was out riding solo and not with the pack at all. I was never really worried, as I have a rather keen sense of direction, but I really wanted to know where that darn gas station was (I could have used a snack). I managed to make my way back home without any problem, averaging a pretty decent pace might I add.

My only regret is I didn’t bring anything to gnaw on, only two bottles of water (as I was expecting to stop at a gas station with the group and buy something). I was rather beat by the time I got home since I didn’t make any pit stops. Even so, I made an extra lap around the neighborhood to make sure the odometer read 100k rather than 98.7k. Total time – 2 hrs 50 min, which gave me an average pace of 21 mph, not too shabby for a guy who normally only rides 10k each way to work!

I may go out for another ride with the Roadsters (in a different group of course), but I can’t say I am all that fussed about it. I thought I would like it more after I had so much fun on the ‘grooms road ride’, but perhaps that was because I was riding with friends. Riding in a pack is nice, you can cruise along without much effort in the slipstream, but in the end, I think I would rather spend my time out exploring and wandering.

Driven to Distraction

Even though I was away, I didn’t forget about Dubai or its myriad of traffic woes. I kept tabs on the local press, searching out articles on traffic and the metro. I must say I have been very impressed with the recent reporting in The National concerning road safety. After the WHO report on traffic fatalities came out they stepped up the to plate and have been doing a good job of highlighting the woeful inadequacies of the built environment in the UAE as well as the horrendous local driving practices.

My favourite article was headlined, Young motorists 'fear ridicule' , on August 13th. I was excited to see the story as I had read a similar storey previously, but I was never able to figure out where I saw it. The basic jist is, young Emirates drive like complete nimrods because they are afraid of what their friends will say if they drive safely. It’s apparently even uncool to wear a seatbelt. I’d totally rather die than be uncool!

I suppose a certain percentage of the youth in any country can be pointed to as being complete morons. In LA one would perhaps join a gang, deal some drugs, and perhaps shoot at someone from a moving car. Here, drugs and gangs don’t seem to be so cool, so hey, instead let’s drive at high speed while swerving between lanes without signalling!

I think the driver behaviour here is a symptom of a larger problem with this society. The people who engage in these behaviours obviously lack some sort of key personality trait that links behaviour with consequence. They are basically kings of the castle, running around with big boys toys and little to no impetus to act in a way that benefits anyone but themselves. I’m not saying that every Emirate acts in such a way, but clearly there are enough doing so that one runs into them every single day – even on a short commute.

There is a definite sense of entitlement wizzing through the air here. For example, just last night I was hunkered down at the fish shack near Um Suqeim park enjoying some tasty fried fish and prawns. We were merrily munching away, sitting at our plastic table in a dirt lot when a car (piloted by locals) pulled up and started honking. It continued to honk until the waiter finally went over and spoke with them. Basically, they couldn’t be bothered to actually get out of their car to order their food! It happened more than once while we were eating, which was quite annoying. I finally yelled at another car to try walking into the restaurant themselves. They ended up tearing off in a huff – sans fish. It’s not like it was terribly hot outside, or there was no parking. They apparently just thought it was beneath them to actually lift a finger for their meal.

In terms of crazy road behaviour, it’s hard to top an email I recently received from a colleague. He sent around some photos that he took while driving home on Emirates Rd. Incredibly (or not so incredibly for Dubai), what he described was a series of about 20 cars driving down the highway at 120 kph with several people hanging out the windows and one guy literally sitting on the roof. As if that wasn’t enough, someone jumped from the roof of one car to another and then climbed in the window (unfortunately that wasn’t captured on film).

This isn’t an isolated incident either. Another friend told me last National Day he was driving to Abu Dhabi and saw a guy sitting on the roof of a car doing 120 kph as well. Another guy he saw had his seat fully reclined and was steering the car with his feet.

OK, so I have heard of this in the US as well, but more than likely this similar behaviour would also include a rural farm road and take place at well after midnight. This was a crowded Emirates Rd at 6pm on a weekday! WTF? Are they all training to be stuntmen? Have they watched one too many re-runs of CHiPs? It’s no wonder everyone drives like maniacs, they have little to no sense of consequence for personal danger – where were the cops? Are the lives of these young Emirates otherwise extremely boring? Do they need this in order to feel ‘alive’? I am genuinely curious.

Of course these were just outlandish examples of bravado by the young (and brain dead). In fact, the people actually driving were probably doing so a bit safer than normal since their friends were hanging out on top of the car. The real problem is the everyday driving habits of these same guys. If they don’t think sitting on top of a car is risky, then changing lanes at high speed without signalling is a bit of a yawn. But it’s all of those little decisions that they make that cause all of the big accidents.

Disturbingly, the actions of certain reckless drivers are apparently more contagious than swine flu. According to a recent article – again in The National – “Bad driving spreads like a “virus” among motorists who copy others’ negative behaviour and flout the law”. I have totally noticed this trend in Dubai, and I am glad someone has actually gone and quantified it (the study was done by a researcher from UAE University in Al Ain). I see westerners, who have completely been undone by the defacto ‘rules of the road’ here in Dubai. They drive more aggressively and more dangerously than they would at home, simply because everyone else is doing it and there is an utter lack of enforcement.

I have had colleagues tell me they didn’t realize how bad of drivers they had become until they went back to their home countries and hit the roads. They soon realized they were driving like complete lunatics – excessively speeding, tailgating, making unsafe lane changes – practices they rarely engaged in prior to living in Dubai.

What is going on here? What happened to this country? What is it doing to the people who live here? It’s like one of those horror movies where everyone gets turned into Zombies or infected with rage.

According to another article in The National, some people may actually need therapy to curb their whacked out driving. The article also seems to suggest that poor driving by local youth is the result of the breakdown of traditional family life paired with universal teenage unruliness. One teen was quoted saying, “During driving and that rush of adrenaline – the car becomes like ... I’m a superman, and I can do whatever I want to do.” Again, this could probably be a kid from any country, but the major difference here is, no one is stopping him.

Something really needs to happen; a societal change needs to occur. Hopefully the WHO report was the wake-up call that this country needed. Kudos to The National for not letting the report be a blip on the radar. Let’s hope they keep up the heat on the government, and on the residents of this country (local and expat), to make the roads a safer place.

Of course the problems on the road aren’t all caused by poor driving. The built environment itself encourages speeding, and there seems to be little impetus for yielding to more vulnerable road users (pedestrians and cyclists). There is a slight glimmer of hope though, and once again it seems that Abu Dhabi is gaining the upper hand in converting their city to a more liveable place. According to yet another article in The National (they are on a roll), the city has created a new program to upgrade pedestrian crossings. Though small, it is a great first step in rearranging priorities on the road. In Dubai’s defence I have seen several new raised crosswalks dotted around Bur Dubai and Karama, but there doesn’t seem to be even the glimmer of any systematic change in design principles (such as Abu Dhabi’s plan 2030).

Both cities have a long way to go before becoming attractive places for pedestrians (according to the article, Abu Dhabi saw 26 pedestrian deaths in just the first 71 days of the year). Plus, neither of these programs is much more than a bandaid for the real problem, which is roadways which are designed purely to move as many vehicles as possible without regard for pedestrian or cyclist safety. Study after study has shown that roadway design greatly influences driver behaviour, and Dubai’s roadway designs say please speed!
I think it’s time for Dubai to reassess its relationship with the automobile. Hopefully the opening of the Metro will be seen as the moment when a shift started to occur; a shift away from designing for cars, and towards designing for people.

I'm Back! And the Metro is open!

My faithful reader(s?) may have noticed a slight drop off in Dubai Sans Auto blog posts of late. I have never been a consistent poster, but 3 months is a bit of a stretch, so I suppose I owe an explanation. Lately the ‘Dubai’ has been taken out of Dubai Sans Auto. Due to the recent financial… unpleasantness, opportunities for gainful local employment are growing rare for a hard working engineer. Long story short, I was shipped off to jolly olde England for a few months of chargeable time. Do not be alarmed though, rest assured dear reader(s?) as I am Sans Auto Sans Frontiers (i.e. I rode in London)!

I know what you are thinking, I totally bagged on cycling through the summer in Dubai even though I made grand pronouncements about riding all year, but honestly, it wasn’t my decision. Not that I minded being able to run and ride without fear of heat stroke.

I was actually back in Dubai as of late August (and rode in the 44 degree heat), but didn’t manage to post until now. In my defence, I was really busy (and or lazy), and I was only here for two weeks before heading off again (this time on holiday). But now that I am safely ensconced back in Dubai’s hot and humid womb (and less busy), I plan to be like the RTA and ‘Unleash’ a series of stupendous posts.

First of all, let’s pick some of the low hanging fruit:

Metro! Holy moley, it’s actually open! Well, sort of. For one thing, it didn’t actually open on 09-09-09. That really irked me, as I flew out of Dubai on 10-09-09 at 12:30 AM to go on holiday. Here I was thinking I was going to get to ride it to work on the 9th, and BAM! The RTA unleashes a worm into my proverbial celebratory apple. I entered the golden ticket contest, but to no avail. So at 9:09 PM on 09-09-09 I was staring out my window at the celebratory fireworks in the distance, being transported nowhere.

Second gripe, they didn’t open all the stations, and the ones they did open don’t necessarily seem to make much sense. They obviously targeted certain stations to finish on time, so it is rather curious that not a single one was adjacent to the marina which is probably the densest concentration of housing within walking distance to a station.

Third gripe, their information management leaves something to be desired. Up until right before the launch there was scarcely any information about riding the metro available on their website. To find out about fares, zones, timetables, etc one had to search the newspapers for information! Even now, the RTA website doesn’t include the individual feeder bus maps, which by the way are the most unprofessional looking maps I have ever seen. I could do better with Microsoft Paint (which is what it appears they were done in).

I am really having difficulty seeing the RTA’s thinking here (RE website/maps/graphics). If you look in the stations (or even close to the stations) they have really well designed maps and signage, why didn’t they extend that content (and level of design) to their website? I can forgive construction delays and first week delays due to bugs in the system, but they had all the time in the world to come up with a clear and coherent website and content for it. Why did they spend big bucks hiring Satchi and Satchi and not have them make over all of their graphics and info?

Despite the gripes, I was really looking forward to trying out the metro, and rode it to work as soon as I returned to Dubai from holiday. I’ve now ridden it several times, and I have to say I am quite impressed with the stations and how smoothly everything seems to be running (in an inadvertent stroke of luck I managed to miss out on the opening week teething problems).

For my first ride I set off from home and headed to my nearest feeder bus stop, which is a mere 4 minute walk from my front door. I knew approximately where it was supposed to be from the craptastic (looking) map for the F13A route, and I honed in on the exact location by looking out my living room window (we are on the 26th floor) and seeing the bus stop to pick someone up. Upon arriving at the stop I noted there was no sign, but it seems the RTA is experimenting with bus stop sculpture in lieu of signage – my stop is called red hairy moustache shovel tongue man. Dude is totally stoned…

Mr. Moustache bus stop

The morning wasn’t TOO hot, but rather humid. I did start to glisten, but didn’t reach anywhere near even the middle of the ‘MOIST’ scale. Luckily, there is quite a bit of shade near the stop, so it was a fairly pleasant wait. In any case, I only waited 5 minutes for the bus, which arrived nearly empty.

The bus took 13 minutes to reach the financial center station, and that was after just missing several lights. I can’t wait for my local ‘Burj Dubai’ stop to open, as the bus shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes. The buses are quite nice and surprise, surprise, the ‘next stop’ screens actually operate correctly! Perhaps the RTA is reading my blog.

Interior of feeder bus with funcioning 'next stop' screen!

Upon arriving it was a short walk to the station, up several escalators, through the gates and up another escalator to the platform. I heard my train being called as I arrived, so I booked it up the escalator and ran onto the train… only to have it sit there for a minute and a half! Soon I discovered this was standard procedure at each stop. Anywhere from one minute 10 to one minute 30 seconds dwell time at each station. I seriously hope this is going to be phased out when the whole line becomes operational because it will easily add 30 minutes to the full trip time which is insane. A dwell time of 10 seconds would be more appropriate, especially for the number of people using the service (not many, there were about 25 people on my train).

Morning commute = empty train

In any case, the train finally pulled away and we hummed along the tracks without incident. The ride is nice and smooth and you can’t beat the view! I only went two stops, so the whole journey took eight and a half minutes. It’s the only time I wished I lived on the other end of town, so I could get a longer ride in. The trains are well appointed and comfortable to ride in. I could do without the background music though.

Upon arriving at Burjuman (Khalid Bin Waleed) station, I made my way above ground and trekked down to my office. Total travel time door to door was 44 minutes. Not too shabby! As a comparison, it usually takes between 20 and 25 min to ride to work, plus 10 min to walk upstairs and change. 10 min extra to arrive non-sweaty is not huge price to pay. Not that I will totally give up on cycling to work, but it is nice to finally have an alternate option!

The stations themselves (at least the two I have seen) are quite spectacular. This is one area where they definitely have everyone else beat - except perhaps Moscow. Though they may even surpass Moscow, check out this chandelier at the Burjuman (Kalid Bin Waleed) station:

The Cosmic Jellyfish chandelier

For the trip home I decided to test plan B, which is metro + folding bike! I had left my Brompton at work while I was on holiday so a colleague could use it for a test ride before deciding to buy one himself, so it was ready and waiting for my ride home.

The Brompton seriously sped up the commute. I even rode it the short distance from the office to the metro saving a couple of minutes. Again, my train arrived just as I was entering the station – there must have been some good karma coming my way after my months of bike commuting. The train was much more crowded than it was during my morning commute; plenty of room to stand, but no seats.

Plenty of room for the trusty Brompton

Commute home is slightly more packed. Check out the 4 posted hand hold!

Upon arriving at financial center station I unfolded and peddled off towards home. The ride only took 11 minutes, but I had decided to do it in my work clothes to see how I scored on the MOIST index. It was still fairly steamy, though no where near mid summer temperatures. I did sweat quite a bit – but not full cycle to work sweatiness. I managed to go out to dinner later in the same outfit without the missus even noticing – i.e. I didn’t stink.

Total travel time for Plan B? 29 minutes! That means the folding bike + Metro is on par with or (slightly) better than riding the whole way (when changing from bike clothes into work clothes is included in the time)! It should be even faster and even less sweaty when the Burj Dubai station opens. I could easily pop down there in 5 minutes on the bike; which in all but the hottest of weather won’t make me sweat horribly.

There is also a plan C, which is riding to the station on a normal bike and locking it up. This option will be slightly longer since I’ll have to walk from the station to the office, but then again, I won’t have to lug the Brompton around either.

So basically I now have a whole range of options for commuting. If I want to get around town, I’ll be taking my Brompton with me, since the feeder bus service is still a bit spotty (and subject to traffic). For getting to work, I’ll either still ride, or ride to the station and park the bike + metro. If I am planning on running home, I’ll catch the feeder bus + metro.

I am totally mobile, and LOVING it!