DUBAI // For the Borja family, it was the day they had been awaiting for months. Not even a looming night shift was going to stop Bob Borja from taking his wife, Victoria, and two-month-old baby boy, Aiden, on one of the first Dubai Metro train rides. At 7.45am yesterday the young Filipino family joined the steady flow of eager commuters who emerged from Khalid bin al Waleed station, in Bur Dubai, having already made it halfway along the newly opened Red Line.
And despite having stopped at each of the stations before it, they were still excited by what they found. "Our plan is to go to each and every station today," Mrs Borja said, baby in arms. "We want to take a look and really see what Dubai Metro is about. We would have gone the night before if we were allowed." The family, who live in Al Nahda and began their journey from Al Rashidya station, said that although Mr Borja could not use the Metro to travel to work in Al Awir they would use it for all weekend and social trips because it was "cheap and fast".
Their sentiments and enthusiasm for the new rail network became the theme of the day as a steady stream of upbeat commuters young and old flowed in and out of the Bur Dubai station enraptured by what they had seen. Zia Mirza was spending his day off riding the Metro from station to station. "The fact that it is driverless is what I really love about it," Mr Mirza said. "You can see right out." While many of the stations were relatively quiet throughout the day, by 5pm yesterday temporary crowd control measures were being introduced at the Mall of Emirates station as families, fresh from work and eager to try out the trains for themselves before iftar, descended on what looks likely to be one of the city's busiest stops.
One onlooker said: "Depending on when you arrived there you'd either face a massive queue or none at all. "The security there seemed to be keeping it well under control but they were restricting the number of passengers who reached the platform proper for safety reasons and were introducing temporary barriers to ensure it didn't get out of control." Another passenger said queue-jumpers were beginning to test the patience of some customers but that once on board passengers applauded the train as it moved away from the station.
At Nakheel Harbour and Rashidiya stations, queues were also forming through the evening. Among the patient commuters was Rizam Jeylabdeen, 29, a retail assistant from Sri Lanka, who on leaving his job at the Burjuman centre at 6.30pm was heading home to Rashidiya on the Metro to collect his wife and six-year-old son and take them back. "Every day my son is saying he wants to see it, so tonight when I finish work I will bring them."
Mr Jeylabdeen was almost an hour early for work yesterday after deciding to use the Metro. Previously the trip from Rashidiya to Bur Dubai meant a 90-minute bus journey in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Yesterday, it took him 15 minutes, he said with a grin. And it cost only Dh2. People who encountered delays or small problems on the Metro refused to be negative. Prakash Kumar, 42, a sales manager, drove in from Sharjah to try it.
"It was fantastic," he said, despite a 15-minute delay at the Financial Centre. "I'm not sure if that was a delay or a deliberate stop. But I like it all the same. I will definitely be using it again." loatway@thenational.ae
