MBR City

Infrastructure 2 min read

The road the district is built along is being rebuilt around it

Two chalk-white paper roads with dashed lane markings crossing diagonally on a teal ground, one carried over the other on small sand-coloured piers

MBR City was laid out along a street that was never built to carry a city. On 30 August the RTA awarded the contracts that change that.

The award

Two contracts, Dh1.161 billion between them, covering roughly 17 kilometres of road and 3,700 metres of bridges. Completion is scheduled for the end of 2028.

The first contract

It runs Al Meydan Street from Latifa bint Hamdan Street to Umm Suqeim Street, about 14 kilometres, and takes in Al Marabea' Street from Dubai Hills to Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road. At the Al Marabea'/Al Meydan junction it builds a grade-separated interchange with 1,600 metres of bridges and a capacity of 14,400 vehicles an hour, plus a direct three-lane connection to Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road rated at 7,800 vehicles an hour and a 700-metre elevated link on the Dubai–Al Ain Road towards Nad Al Hamar.

The second contract

It takes Al Meydan Street from First Al Khail Street, across Al Khail Road, to Muscat Street, adds about 2 kilometres of new surface road connecting to Latifa bint Hamdan Street, and builds a second grade-separated interchange at Al Meydan/Muscat Street — 1,400 metres of bridges, again 14,400 vehicles an hour. It also includes an integrated cycling network with underpasses.

What the RTA says it buys

North–south capacity up 18%, and the run from Al Manama Street and the Dubai–Al Ain Road to Umm Suqeim cut from 30 minutes to 10. Mattar Al Tayer, the RTA's Director General, called Al Meydan Street one of Dubai's key strategic corridors. The RTA puts the population served at more than 500,000 across the surrounding communities.

Two things in this award matter more to residents than the headline number. The first is the cycling network with underpasses in contract two: MBR City has cycle paths that end at arterial roads, and a grade-separated crossing is the difference between a network and a set of disconnected loops. The second is the completion date. End-2028 means the district lives through roughly two years of construction on its main street first, and the deepest disruption will be at the two interchange sites — Al Marabea'/Al Meydan and Al Meydan/Muscat Street — rather than spread evenly along the 17 kilometres. Anyone choosing between addresses inside the district would do well to look at which of those two junctions they would be commuting through.

Source: Dubai Government Media Office checked against the source

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