Though American drivers may be feeling the pressure of high fuel prices, in the oil exporting Gulf countries, gas is still stupendously cheap due to government subsidies (yes, subsidies). Hence it’s not surprising to hear that cities like Dubai are plagued with automobile congestion issues. Yet apparently planners in the UAE are realizing that just building more roads isn’t going to solve this issue. They’ve committed to building not just a high speed rail network (beginning with a connection between Abu Dhabi and Dubai), but also light rail and metro systems in the two cities.
Of course, the UAE is a much smaller country than the United States, but it’s disheartening to see that even such an oil addicted nation is pulling ahead of us in terms of rail infrastructure development, both on the regional and national level.
Filed under: International High Speed Rail, congestion, dubai, high speed rail, hsr, uae
Trains For America 
Don’t forget the monorail – http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/PalmJumeirah.html
Don’t forget that the biggest argument for not having public transit in America is that it’s an endless sprawl. Maybe they don’t realize that Dubai has a density of 1/3rd that of the most sprawling US Cities. The argument is increasingly fading as it’s pretty obvious that people will use transit if it’s available.
I was just in Abu Dhabi a few weeks ago. The traffic is pretty dense, and only growing. What I think is especially important though, is that Abu Dhabi and Dubai are planning all this rail work while gas is (I believe) nearly US$0.30 a gallon. In the US it is over $4 a gallon and still we argue against it.