Bike Lanes in Dubai's future? Probably Not

As I mentioned recently, there doesn't seem to be much progress on the Bicycle Master Plan front. None of the phase one routes are being built, and they haven't even bothered to stencil bicycles onto the beach road path (a recommendation of the BMP). I did recently discover Dubai does indeed have a bicycle stencil, as I saw some bicycle pavement markings approaching the beach path (not to be confused with the beach road path). I had heard about the beach path, but hadn't actually seen it until recently. I think that mainly has to do with the fact that it goes from no-where to no-where. Literally, there is only one way to get on, and it's in the middle. I personally can't think of anything more boring than riding around in circles which is probably why I hadn't ever seen it before (and why I don't drive out to Nad Al Sheeba to ride). You might as well get a trainer and ride your bike in your living room while watching footage of the Tour de France - it would be more interesting.

Speaking of recent discoveries, I attended City Scape last week (or was that two weeks back? I am a bit lazy in my blogging duties), and was quite impressed with the Meraas Jumeriah Gardens project. Not only was I impressed that they had the cajones to exhibit a model (since they clearly are not working on the project, they knocked down half of Satwa and then sat on their collective hands), but I was also impressed by their actual vision for their development (should they ever actually build it).

It seems the Meraas folks are new urbanists! Everywhere you looked there was dense development, public transportation, walkable streets (with closely spaced signalled intersections), and... wait for it.... BIKE LANES! Not even just bike lanes, bike lanes and bike boxes at the intersections! They even went so far as to have little cyclists in their models. It was truely heartwarming to see.

There are 16 bikes on the first block alone! But in a bow to reality, two buses are blocking the bike lanes

Not so sure if putting the bike box in the crosswalk would be standard practice, but I like the grassy median and the sidewalk cafe!

I really like that they were on-street bike lanes as well. I don't think cycle tracks are going to work very well in this city since no one bothers to stop, much less look when making right turns (and thus you would need to come to a halt at every intersection and wait for traffic). If you want to actually get anywhere, you are going to have to mix it up with traffic.

The more I ride around Dubai, the more convinced I am that they should shelve their BMP and just take about 35cm from each travel lane and donate it to a bike lane (a three lane road like 312 road behind DIFC could easily handle a nice 1.05m wide bike lane). Standard lanes in Dubai are 3.5m wide, and must be a minimum of 3.0m, so there is plenty of room. Also, narrowing lanes generally leads to slightly lower speeds, which is an added bonus!

I had heard of the Jumeriah Gardens development before, and besides that whole tearing down half of Satwa thing, I thought it was brilliant in that they decided to build it right in the middle of the city rather than off in never never land (AKA Dubai-land, or some other hard to reach location). The only way this city will ever become a true city is if it creates a dense core and makes that core incredibly pedestrian, transit and bicycle friendly. I always thought the high rise district along SZR was a bit silly; who centers their city around a highway? Plus, its all too linear. Some of the new buildings in the DIFC will help on the east side of SZR, but the Jumeriah Gardens development would really flesh out the area and make it a dense urban district. Then all you have to do is submerge SZR between the trade center roundabout and the 1st interchange and cover it up with a park! Could you imagine? It would restore the street grid to the area and make the whole district one piece again.