As Etihad Rail announces 2026 launch, what will it take to get people out of their cars and on to trains?

Low cost of running a vehicle and sprawling cities discourage public transport use, analysts say

The opening of passenger train services in the UAE next year will be a major step forward in the country’s public transport provision – but will it get people out of their cars?

As reported in The National, Etihad Rail announced that passenger operations will begin in 2026, with the first four stations of an eventual countrywide network set to be Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah and Fujairah. Etihad Rail will be keen to tempt citizens and residents out of their vehicles through its promise of carriages capable of carrying 400 passengers each and trains that will travel at 200kph.

Read more: What is the new high-speed Abu Dhabi-Dubai route?

The launch will be one of the most important milestones in public transport in the Gulf since the 2009 debut of Dubai Metro, which has proved to be enormously popular, with more than 250 million passenger journeys now recorded each year, according to Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority. The network is continuing to expand.

Yet this success has not eliminated the emirate’s traffic congestion, which eased during the Covid-19 pandemic before returning with a vengeance.

Low fuel prices drive up traffic

Dr Alexandra Gomes, a research fellow at the London School of Economics who has studied Gulf cities, said one factor that encouraged car use in the region was its low cost.

“In the Gulf, low petrol prices combined with underinvestment in public transport, particularly in terms of network coverage, frequency and reliability, continue to incentivise those who can drive to do so,” she said.

UAE fuel prices this month range from Dh2.39 to Dh2.58 per litre, less than half of what it costs in, for example, some western nations, where significant taxes are imposed on petrol and diesel. Another incentive to drive is the often significantly lower cost of a car in the UAE than in other markets.

Many major cities, such as Singapore and London, tend to have stronger financial disincentives to vehicle use, coupled with high-quality public transport.

Prof Marcus Enoch, professor of transport strategy at Loughborough University in the UK, said London showed that restrictions on cars could encourage public transport use. Congestion charges were introduced there in 2003 by the mayor, Ken Livingstone, with the promise that revenue would be invested in public transport, aiding less well-off people unable to afford the toll.

“Congestion charging is fairly progressive in the sense that people who can afford to drive will never change; they will pay for the privilege of driving,” Prof Enoch said. “People with less money probably will not drive as much and they will benefit from improved public transport.”

Facing opposition

London also shows, however, that measures to restrict car use can face huge political headwinds, with the current mayor, Sadiq Khan, having met significant opposition to his 2023 expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone, which imposes an additional charge on vehicles that create greater pollution.

Singapore is often held up as the poster child for effective traffic management, with its Electronic Road Pricing imposing high charges for entering certain areas at peak times. From the beginning of this year, Dubai’s Salik system introduced similar dynamic pricing, with larger fees levied from 6am to 10am and 4pm to 8pm. Abu Dhabi has a road toll system, Darb, which charges at peak times.

However, these charges have not stemmed the growth in the volume of traffic as the cities develop and their populations increase. Salik recently reported a 9.3 per cent annual increase in the number of active vehicles to 4.47 million, while in the first three months of this year the tally of journeys rocketed by 35.1 per cent year-on-year to 210.8 million.

To get people out of their cars, public transport must be of high quality, which the UAE’s new rail services are likely to be, said Prof Enoch. It must also, he said, be “significantly faster than the car”, which is especially likely to be the case with high-speed rail.

Etihad Rail has said that the Dubai to Abu Dhabi journey on its trains will take around 57 minutes, and Fujairah to Abu Dhabi will take about 105 minutes. A separate high-speed service between Dubai and Abu Dhabi will probably further undercut the time taken by road.

“The need is to make sure access to the high-speed stations is well served by public transport,” Prof Enoch said. “You probably need to look at feeder buses and foot pedestrian infrastructure, which in the UAE maybe means air-conditioned walkways or cheap taxis that will get people from the stations to where they live.”

The physical structure of urban areas in the region is another factor that, according to transport analysts, leads to the use of cars rather than public transport. Dr Gomes said that the “extensive sprawl of Gulf cities”, characterised by low-density and “leapfrog development”, increases distances between home and work.

“This urban development makes it difficult to create compact, connected and co-ordinated environments that are needed to support effective public transport systems, further encouraging car use,” Dr Gomes said.

The continued development of roads and parking provision in the region’s towns and cities can, Dr Gomes added, discourage walking, meeting or even playing.

“This, combined with the perceived freedom associated with car use and the lack of a reliable transport alternative, leads even more people to rely on private vehicles and meet in indoor areas such as shopping centres,” she said. Dr Gomes said other measures to reduce car dependence included creating mixed-use developments and making residential areas more walkable, although she cautioned that they were unlikely to be sufficient on their own.

“The Gulf needs to develop urban form and transport in tandem, each reinforcing the other, by promoting designs that provide shading – narrower streets, such as the traditional Sikka, are just an example – and reimagining streets as public spaces rather than corridors for cars. This integrated approach can help create the conditions for people to walk more and drive less,” she said.

“There is an urgent need for the Gulf to address climate change and adopt more sustainable urban practices, with public transport and active mobility playing a fundamental role in this transition.”