Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has unveiled plans for a new underground transport network, director-general Mattar Al Tayer announced at the Mohammed bin Rashid Leadership Forum. The project forms part of a three-dimensional mobility vision for the emirate, spanning ground, sky and underground levels.
The first phase, known as the Dubai Loop, is budgeted at Dh565 million ($153.8 million) and will link the Dubai International Financial Centre with Dubai Mall using autonomous Tesla vehicles running through four stations: Burj Khalifa, DIFC 2, Zabeel Dubai Mall Parking and ICD Brookfield Place.
If the full network is built out, it would stretch 22 kilometres across 19 stations, at an estimated total cost of Dh2 billion.
Al Tayer said the investment responds to mounting pressure on the city's infrastructure: Dubai's roads currently carry about 11 million trips a day, equivalent to roughly 7,000 journeys every minute. The emirate's population reached 4.58 million by the end of 2025, up 7.5 per cent year-on-year, and officials expect the number of people moving through the city during daylight hours — already more than six million — to double by 2040.
Authorities describe the underground system as a necessary complement to Dubai's existing metro network and to aerial mobility projects currently under study, as the city plans for a sharp rise in daily travel demand over the next 15 years.