If you’ve never been to Dubai, know that it is a bustling metropolis that continues to grow day by day. There are around two-hundred separate bus routes in the city, so finding a Dubai bus to take you where you need to be may be challenging. Following is a brief guide to help you. It will explore a few locations, as well as how and where to get tickets, and what to expect in a bus.
The Dubai bus lines are really the largest component of public transit in the city, and will take you to many places the metro and tram just can’t reach like Jumeirah beach, for example. While the metro is stuck to its track, buses have autonomy and can take you to the beach, to the country, to historic locations like the museum in the Al Fahid fort and more. Fares are fairly inexpensive and bus lines are continuously running. There are a number of different bus routes to choose from. An inter-city route will follow a circuit within the main metropolitan area of Dubai. Express bus routes have fewer stops and so reach destinations more quickly, and local bus routes usually feed a certain community or area. There are three main types of buses: Articulated, Standard, And Double-Decker. Articulated buses are kind of like two buses connected together at the middle. Double-deckers stack passengers on top of each other, and standard buses are what you would generally expect of a bus. You can stop at unplanned stops if you find something you like that isn’t on the bus’s regular itinerary; just press one of the stop bells.
RTA works to keep its transit options up-to-date, and newer buses have all the bells and whistles; including vocal announcements of impending stops, systems to count passengers, positioning systems to help pinpoint where a bus is at the RTA center of operations, and digital displays that are internal as well as external. Dubai is kind of an international community, meaning the locals are looking to help you out as a tourist. In general, the more metropolitan the bus stop is, the more comfortable the shelter where you wait will be. As Dubai develops, its developments spread outward. Generally, your best experiences on a bus in Dubai are going to be at well-known stops between work-times. After nine in the morning and before four in the afternoon are the most ideal times to use the bus system in Dubai, should you want to wait less than an hour.
There are no tickets to purchase on the bus, so you need to prepare and get a debit travel card called a NOL card in advance. Once you’ve got one you can fill it up and recharge at the vending machines. The best NOL card for tourists is the red card. When you enter or exit the bus you have to hold your NOL card against the machine in the bus. As the bus travels throughout Dubai, the size of the metropolis forces additional charges for continued riding. But once you go through three zones, they don’t charge you anymore. A Gold Card doubles the price of a fare, but it gives you the closest thing to first-class travel that can be found on a bus in Dubai. Meanwhile, a personal card maintains the same price as a silver NOL card. A red card, which is primarily for tourist use, increases the cost on fares between 5% and 25%, depending on how many zones you need to travel through. Cards can be purchased all over town; at bus centers, at stops, at hotels and marketplaces.
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