Check Out This New Bike-Lane Tunnel in Dubai
Officials in Dubai recently celebrated the opening of a new bike-lane tunnel in the neighborhood of Al Meydan.
At 525-feet long and almost 22-feet wide, the tunnel can facilitate up to 800 bicycle trips per hour.
The announcement was made via Twitter, with a tweet and an accompanying video of a trip through the tunnel. Hopefully officials were looking the other way when one of the video’s riders rode in the wrong lane, which may be grounds for officials to confiscate your bike in the city.
#RTA has opened a new tunnel specifically designed for cyclists in Al Meydan area. The tunnel spans 160m in length and 6.6m in width, with a capacity to accommodate approximately 800 bicycles per hour. https://t.co/6pqh6VIL3f pic.twitter.com/uy0Ssvqday
— RTA (@rta_dubai) May 2, 2023
The tunnel boasts two clearly marked lanes with an adjacent sidewalk for pedestrians. The tunnel is lit day and night to ensure greater safety.
Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) said that this is just one element of an overarching plan to turn Dubai into a more bike-friendly city and improving road safety for riders while cutting overall carbon emissions. That plan aims to create a robust network of bike lanes that will someday link a variety of residential areas and the city’s attractions, making much of the city accessible by bike.
The RTA hopes that, by the time the plan is fully realized, there will nearly 509 miles of bike lanes throughout the city.
58 of those miles are slated to be included in The Loop, a sustainable cycling and running path that is enclosed in a modern and technologically advanced structure that is projected to be completed by 2040. As proposed, The Loop will also include parks and vertical farms. It will use kinetic energy for power and recycled water for irrigation.
As the city has grown in profile over the last decade-plus, Dubai and the UAE at large have made strides to embrace and promote themselves as cycling hotbeds.
From the introduction of the Dubai Tour in 2014 and the Abu Dhabi Tour becoming a World Tour event in 2017, the desert nation has been making a case for its bona fides as a biking nation. Since 2019, the UAE Tour has become one of the marquee races of the early cycling season.
Of course, it helps that a talent like the once-in-a-few-generations Tadej Pogačar rides for the nation’s flagship team, UAE Team Emirates.
Beyond their relationship with Pog and the UAE Tour, Dubai is perhaps the Al Qudra Cycle Track, which is a 53-mile-long bike path that cuts straight through the heart of the desert surrounding the city. The path can be extended up to as much as 111-mile if riders take a few of the path’s extensions.
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