294.7 million metro riders, an 802-million-ride system, and the 30-km Blue Line rising — the driverless spine of the city that learned rails second.
Dubai’s Metro is the world’s longest driverless network and the spine of a city that decided, late and decisively, that rails matter — the Blue Line now under construction is the largest single expansion since opening day.
The Metro carried 294.7 million riders in 2025 (+7%) across the Red and Green lines — 37% of all mobility in the emirate, with BurJuman interchange alone at 17.8 million.
The system total — metro, tram, buses, marine, taxis and shared mobility — reached 802.1 million riders (+7.4%), averaging 2.2 million a day; October 2025 was the busiest month ever at 72.8 million.
The Blue Line (30 km, 14 stations) is under construction toward Mirdif, Dubai Silicon Oasis and Creek Harbour — designed for 850,000 passengers a day at full capacity, projecting 200,000 daily by 2030 and 320,000 by 2040. Its signature Emaar station will be, at 74 meters, the tallest metro station in the world.
The airport connection is native: the Red Line serves DXB Terminals 1 and 3 directly — the transfer passenger’s first Dubai experience is a driverless train.
The behavioral shift is the metric RTA quotes most: public transport’s journey share rose from 6% in 2006 to 21.6% — in the city that invented the modern car-urbanism of the Gulf.
Dubai is the only city that built the car utopia first and the metro second — and the order turned out to be the advantage. With no legacy network to defend, the RTA could design for where the city was going rather than where it had been: airport terminals on day one, driverless from day one, and a Blue Line aimed at districts that do not fully exist yet. The 21.6% journey share looks modest until you remember the baseline was six.
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