If there's one thing Dubai resident Dionese Nera was growing to hate, it was the 12 hours she spent each week commuting to and from work aboard a charter bus to her job in Jebel Ali.
She was so fed up with the commuting time, she ended up taking a job closer to her home in Deira.
“I had to wake up an hour early. It took me 45 minutes to get to work by bus in the morning,'' said Nera. “Some days that doubled. Coming back was the worst. It took me one-and-ahalf hours to come home.''
Nera, 24, said Dubai's Dh15.5 billion Metro will make a huge difference for workers who are also contemplating changing jobs to avoid long hours commuting in heavy traffic.
Project overseers say the new Metro will cut travelling times for workers by half.
“So long as I'm not sitting on Shaikh Zayed Road moving an inch a minute, I will be happy to take the Metro.'' Nera said.
Venkatraman Rajamani, 56, is a senior business manager with Dubai Festival City.
Rajamani said he is excited at the prospect he can leave his car behind in Bur Dubai and take the Metro.
Each work day, Rajamani spends about 30 to 40 minutes in his car driving to the Dubai Festival City worksite in Garhoud. If a new Metro line helps cut the crossing time of the Dubai Creek by half, he figures he will save 30 minutes a day in travel time.
That's two and a half hours a week of new-found free time that he can invest elsewhere in his life, he said.
“I do drive but it is better to take the Metro because you save a lot of time,'' Rajamani said. “Having a new Metro will definitely make our lives much more comfortable without so much traffic every day.''
In a few months Dubai's ultimate masterpiece – a Dh15.5 billion light railway project – will begin to take a shape that traffic weary residents are sure to soon know and love.
The first of 1,225 concrete pillars that will cradle the electrical track viaduct to be built along Shaikh Zayed Road are now going up. Heavy-drilling equipment is digging its way into sands near BurJuman, one of the major hubs for the Metro system.
