5. COMPARACIÓN CON EL RIESGO EXCEPCIONAL
5.2. DIFERENCIAS
5.2.2. EN CUANTO A LA NATURALEZA DE LA ACTIVIDAD
T H E R E A R E T H R E E M A I N P U B L I C T R A N S P O RT O P T I O N S – Metro, bus or boat. If you plan to use any or all of these, it is best to buy a NOL card – a prepaid card which, depending on the tier you buy, will allow you to load money to use for fares on one method of public transport or all of them, and also on parking meters. It’s a more complicated system than strictly necessary. There are four types of NOL card – red, blue, silver and gold. The red allows you to use one mode of transport only and charges exact fares for individual trips. Cards can be used for a maximum of five one-day passes or ten single journeys within a 90-day period. The silver and gold allow you to use multiple modes of transport and can be bought at Metro ticket offices, many supermarkets and convenience stores for AED 20, which includes AED 14 of credit. The only advantage of the gold card is that you can use it for the gold class on Dubai Metro. Blue is only avail-able online and only suitavail-able for residents, as it is personalised. Visit nol.ae for more details.
B O A T S
F O R A V I S I T O R, boats should be considered more of a tourist attrac-tion than a method of getting from A to B in a timely fashion. The most common form of boat travel in Dubai is the diesel-fuelled abra that crosses the creek – in fact, in 2009, usage totalled more than 16.5 million journeys. They are a useful way of avoiding the Bur Dubai to Deira traffic if you want to visit the Gold or Spice souks on the Deira side.
They’re not the most comfortable things you’ll ever ride on, and the benches can get quite packed, but the trips are short. A direct ride across Dubai Creek costs AED 1 (you can’t use a NOL card) if you buy a ticket at the designated boarding stations. There are 149 motorised abras, which arrive and depart constantly on two main routes – Al Sabkha to Dubai Old Souk (5 a.m.–midnight) and Bur Dubai to Deira Old Souk (24 hours). If you’d like the boat to yourself, the fare should be not more than AED 100 per hour for tourists – but be aware that the driver will probably throw existing passengers off the boat, which can be mortifying. He may ask for more money at the end of the trip.
Another aquatic option is the Dubai water bus, launched in 2007.
Although not quite as atmospheric and slightly more expensive at AED 4 for a single trip (they accept prepaid NOL cards), they are air conditioned, so a bit more bearable in the summer months. The best line for sightseeing is the B5, operated specially for visitors, which stops at five of the nine stations, starting at Al Shindagha,
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then travelling down to Bur Dubai, Deira, Al Seef, Dubai Creek Park and then back to Al Shindagha, taking 90 minutes. It costs AED 50 for adults and AED 25 for children. Call # 04-396-3135 for more information.
B U S E S
I N A B I D T O I M P ROV E T H E J O U R N E Y T I M E S of Dubai’s buses, the government introduced bus lanes in mid-2010. It remains to be seen how well this works, but if successful, it could make them a more viable mode of transport, as it should cut down on journey times, which are currently over-long due to traffic congestion.
The buses are clean and new, and the air-conditioned stops make waiting in the heat more bearable. But unless you are very dedicated to saving either money (trips cost AED 1.80–5.80) or the environ-ment, then avoid, as the network of 79 bus routes can be very tricky to use. Stops and stations are hard to locate, most drivers will only accept the prepaid NOL cards, and buses can get very overcrowded.
The only exception to the rule is when you are only taking a short journey from a Metro stop to your destination (for example, the five-minute trip from the Burj Khalifa Metro stop to the Dubai Mall).
Routes and timetables can be downloaded from rta.ae, a journey planner can be found at wojhati.rta.ae, or you can call # 800-9090.
Probably the most useful service for the visitor is the Emirates Express E100 bus to and from Abu Dhabi, which departs from Al Ghubaibah bus station in Bur Dubai every 40 minutes Saturday–Thursday 6:20 a.m.–
9:40 p.m. It takes two hours and costs AED 20 – considerably less than the AED 300 taxi fare.
M E T R O
T H E N E W E S T A D D I T I O N (as of 9 September 2009, or 09/09/09) to Dubai’s public transport system is the Dubai Metro, and a rather mighty thing it is too. Stations have so far opened in dribs and drabs, but 26 of the 29 stations on the Red Line are now open, and the last 3 are expected to open in early 2011. The track, much of which runs parallel to the Sheikh Zayed Road, is 52.1 kilometres (32.4 miles) long, 4.7 kilometres (2.9 miles) of which is underground, and the state-of-the-art trains are driverless. It starts at Rashidiya, just past the Airport Terminal 3, and goes all the way to Jebel Ali. The Green Line, which will run from Al Qusais to Al Jadaf, will eventually intersect the Red Line at Khalid Bin Al Waleed (locally known as the BurJuman station) and Union Square stations, although the opening date for this has already been pushed back several times. There were originally plans for Blue and Purple lines, but these have been put on hold indefinitely, as plans for the buildings they were intended to serve have been almost universally binned.
Compared to the London Underground, this is Dubai’s first baby step towards a useful transport system – as there are as yet no inter-secting lines, you really do just need to buy a ticket, work out which direction you are going and stand on the right platform. The plat-forms are well signposted, with video screens that tell you how long you will have to wait until the next train arrives (usually a maximum of ten minutes). A disembodied voice announces each stop a couple of seconds before you reach it, so there is no unseemly scrum for the door. Do listen out for it, though, as since the Metro opened, the stopping times have been shortened to speed up the service. Most stations have lifts and escalators (as well as free Wi-Fi), and all have disabled access and are open 6 a.m.–11 p.m. Saturday–Thursday and 2 p.m.–midnight Friday.
Buying a ticket in the stations is easy – in fact, probably easier than on the London Underground. Staff are standing by the ticket machines to help you figure them out (the buttons are in English, so you shouldn’t have trouble deciphering them), but unless you have exact change or want to use a credit card, you should go directly to the booths. Three or four of these are in each station, manned with staff behind the glass, all of whom will speak English to varying degrees. Make sure you tell them exactly where you are going, for if your journey involves an added road journey at the other end (as it does, for example, at the Dubai Mall), you will need a ticket that will also allow you onto the bus.
Tickets are priced by journey length, and if you are unsure of which you need, it is best to go to the counter to speak to an assis-tant. Prices start at AED 2.5 for a single journey within one zone to AED 6.5 for a single for five zones. Double this for return tickets or for gold class. Fares are slightly less if you are loading them onto a silver or a gold NOL card. Children under the age of 5 travel free.
Unless you are allergic to other people or travelling during rush hour, don’t bother with gold. It’s hard to tell where the carriage is (it’s actually the front if you are headed to Dubai Marina and the back if you’re headed to the airport) and not significantly more comfortable.
When we have travelled gold during the daytime, the carriage has been almost empty, but then so were the normal carriages. If you are a single woman travelling on your own and feel uncomfortable, the ladies-only carriage is next to the gold-class carriage – this is espe-cially useful at busy times.
If you already have a NOL card, you just need to touch it to the reader at the barriers, which will slide back to allow you to pass if you have enough credit and also tell you your balance. The same is true of the single paper tickets – the machine will not swallow them when you leave the station, so if you have more than one in your wallet, do try to keep track. In terms of etiquette, if you are feeling polite, then
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do allow pregnant women and the elderly to sit, although it won’t actually be expected of you, as it would in some other countries. If you have luggage, try to keep it out of the way in the areas designated for it. You will actually be stopped from getting on the train if you have very bulky bags.
Try to get a window seat, as the carriages give a great vantage point above the city, or sit at the front if you want to pretend you are at the helm of the driverless train. Two things to remember though:
the powers that be sold off the station names to the highest bidder in some areas, hence First Gulf Bank and Sharaf DG stations give little idea of actual location. Also, some were named at the height of the property boom – so Nakheel Harbour & Tower doesn’t actually exist, despite having a namesake stop.
Also, at most stations, you will probably still need to get a taxi to your final destination, as you tend to be spat out in rather ran-dom locations. Realistically, as a tourist, you will find the most useful stations are those in or near shopping centres. If you want to do a whole day at the malls without having to resort to taxis, you can hit the stores at Deira City Centre, Khalid Bin Al Waleed (for BurJuman Centre), Emirate Towers, Burj Khalifa (for the Dubai Mall) and Ibn Battuta Mall. Al Karama is also useful if you don’t want to battle the area’s traffic but fancy a stroll around its fake handbag and DVD emporia.
P A L M J U M E I R A H M O N O R A I L
T H E PA L M J U M E I R A H M O N O R A I L would be truly useful if it con-nected in some way to the Dubai Metro, but as you might have already gathered, things rarely work like that here. So instead, it is essentially a park-and-ride for Aquaventure at the Atlantis. Tickets cost AED 15 one way and AED 25 return and are operated seven days a week, 8 a.m.–10 p.m. Covered parking is at the Gateway Towers station at the base of the Palm. From there, it is only 5.45 kilometres (3.4 miles) to the Atlantis and takes five minutes.
WALKING
W E W E R E T E M P T E D T O L E AV E T H I S S E C T I O N AT O N E W O R D: don’t. But that’s not entirely fair. Certainly, you can’t expect to cover large areas on foot, but there are pedestrian-friendly pockets of the city that can be pleasant to walk around when the weather is bear-able. Luckily, it’s also not really possible to stray into a dangerous zone of the city, as there isn’t one. Sure, it’s not a great idea to walk around a deserted industrial district such as Al Quoz on your own at night, but there is scant chance of you ever ending up there by acci-dent. The other rule of thumb is that if there is no path or pavement, give up. Shortcuts across sand and stones will nearly always leave you
sweating, swearing and lost. And one last golden rule: do not under-estimate a Dubai summer. Try to walk anywhere – anywhere – in the August heat, and you will be drenched in seconds.
Bur Dubai is a good starting point for your walking tour. The Dubai Museum is flanked by Bastakiya on one side (see page 145 for more detailed information), a pretty if sanitised tourist village that aims to re-create the flavour of Dubai when it was just a desert trad-ing port, and on the other by Meena Bazaar, a maze of alleys and one wide cobbled street that runs along Dubai Creek, with shops selling fabric, Indian clothing, jewellery and kitschy souvenirs. Keep walking along Dubai Creek and you will find the nouveau-quaint Heritage and Diving Villages. To explore Deira, with its Gold and Spice souks, take an abra (traditional boat) for AED 1 across Dubai Creek from here. If at any point you get seriously lost, the best thing to do is flag down a taxi and get them to take you back to your starting point – asking directions is rarely fruitful, as people won’t know street names (or, in these areas, English).
If you like your souks a bit more sanitised, the area around the Burj Kahlifa, the Dubai Mall and the boutique shopping mall and dining destination Souk Al Bahar just opposite are also navigable on foot, and especially pleasant in the early evening when the Dubai Fountain starts up. For shopping and eating, The Walk at Jumeirah Beach Residence, in the Marina, and Marina Walk, just next door, are nice places for an afternoon stroll. Both of these areas have ample parking and lots of taxis.
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