The United Arab Emirates is not a particularly big country. Moreover, it is one of the leading producers of hydrocarbons and thus fuel is quite cheap in the market. This means that transportation, public or private, is hardly a concern for those that are visiting the country. However, this also means that it is not the most walkable country on Earth, since most of its residents prefer to cruise around in their private cars instead. In this article, I will go over some tips and tricks regarding transportation across the UAE, covering all of its seven Emirates. Without further ado, let us get to it!
Public Transportation in Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi, the richest and biggest Emirate, has a very well functioning public transportation system. All you really need is a Hafilat card to use the city’s buses and tram network, and you are good to go. Instead of loading the card with some cash, I opted to get a weekly pass here. This costed me 45 AED including the fee for the card itself. I took plenty of buses in the short time that I spent in Abu Dhabi, which already justified the price of this pass, but better yet, I made use of it again in Al Ain, which also uses the same card as both cities are in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. You can get this card at the Zayed International Airport when you touch down, as the dedicated kiosk works around the clock, where you can pay for it by credit card. Last but not least, there are also frequent buses that connect the airport to Abu Dhabi and to Dubai even after midnight, so you will likely not have to use a taxi during your stay in Abu Dhabi. All in all, using the public transportation is hardly an issue in the designated capital of the UAE.
Public Transportation in Dubai
It is not an issue to use the public transportation in Dubai as well, though it may seem a bit more daunting at first due to the sheer number of people that use it. Dubai is more densely populated than Abu Dhabi, it is also noticeably more touristic, and thus have much more public transport users. In my personal opinion, this is why, it is best to use the public transportation in Dubai outside of the rush hours if it is possible. As a traveller, we certainly have more control over our own schedules, so this was something I could manage somewhat well during my time in Dubai.
As was the case in Abu Dhabi, there is a dedicated transport card that can be used in Dubai, but this one is called the Nol Card. You can use it in any type of public transportation, though they do charge different fees, and even the same vehicle may cost you different rates depending on the length of your eventual route. It is best to get a silver card and put in a few hundred AEDs in it as I did if you wish to travel around Dubai a lot and use some of Dubai’s own public buses to get to nearby Emirates, more on that in a bit! There is also a gold card, which lets you enjoy a more peaceful gold cabin in the metro, though then your fee will be doubled for that ride. I heard only good things about those gold cabins, so if you are fine spending a bit more on your metro rides, a gold Nol card may do you some good. Last but not least, while you can pay the motorized abras that crisscross the Dubai Creek with your Nol card, for the smaller ones with only one motor, you will instead be paying in cash, 1 AED to be specific. This is to say, while a Nol card is necessary for moving around Dubai freely, you should have some cash with you especially if you wish to explore Deira and Bur Dubai in style.
In short, Dubai, with its ferries and metro lines, buses and trams, and possibly more, provide a lot of opportunities for both residents and travellers alike to move around the city. It may seem like the number of options and the amount of people using said options are almost a bit too much at first, but with careful manoeuvring, by which I mean using Google Maps like any other normal human being, you will get from point A to point B in no time.
Public Transportation in other Emirates
I spent three nights in Abu Dhabi and thirteen nights in Dubai, so I can only speak confidently about the public transportation situation in these two Emirates. However, from my significantly shorter observations I can try and summarize the situation in other parts of the UAE as well. First of all, Sharjah and Ajman, both being close to Dubai, are not only served extensively by Dubai’s own buses, but also have their own bus networks. Ajman’s buses can go all the way to Umm al Quwain even. Ras al Khaimah seems to have had a few bus lines when I visited it back in December 2024, Umm al Quwain did not have any public transportation as far as I could tell, and Fujairah, despite being a rather sizeable town, seem to have been served by only one recently opened minibus route. To sum up, I am quite confident that you can rely on public transportation for all your needs in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, and Ajman, but for Fujairah, Ras al Khaimah, and certainly for Umm al Quwain, it is best to rely on taxis or your legs.
Inter-Emirate Public Transportation
So, now that you know how to get from one spot to another within an Emirate, you may be wondering how you can get from one Emirate to another. Well, this is a most interesting topic to say the least, mostly because of the way longer bus routes work in the UAE. You see, for the most part, there are no private companies that work in this sector in the UAE. Certain Emirates’ own bus networks do that job instead. In my experience, you will only really need to use public buses of Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah, and Ajman to explore all Emirates if your accommodation is Dubai. This does not mean that you cannot do this elsewhere. Both Abu Dhabi and Ras Al Khaimah seem to have extensive connections to the rest of the Emirates as well, but my own experience was with Dubai. Therefore, you can find out how to get from Dubai to any one of the other six Emirates, and Al Ain, below.
Dubai – Abu Dhabi: There are two buses that ply this route, E100 and E101. Both are operated by Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority (RTA) and thus require a Nol card. Both arrive at Abu Dhabi’s Central Bus Station though E100 departs from Al Ghubaiba Bus Station whereas E101 leaves from Ibn Battuta Mall Bus Station.
Dubai – Al Ain: You can take the E201 from Al Ghubaiba Bus Station to go there. It will drop you at Al Ain Bus Station, though you can leave at an earlier bus stop to explore Souq Al Qattara and a few other smaller oases in the more northern parts of the city. You can then take a local bus to go to city center, one that you can pay by your Hafilat card.
Dubai – Sharjah: You can take the E306 from Al Ghubaiba Bus Station to go there, or, if you are feeling adventurous, you can take the FR5 ferry from Al Ghubaiba Marine Transport Station 2 instead. The bus will get you to Al Jubail Bus Station whereas the ferry will drop you at the marine transport station by the Sharjah Maritime Museum.
Dubai – Fujairah: You can take the E700 from Etisalat Bus Station. It will drop you at Fujairah’s new bus station. You can then take a minibus from here for 3 AED to get you to the city centre. You can get back on these minibuses to go back to Fujairah’s rather far away bus station by going here.
Dubai – Ajman: You can take the E400 from Union Bus Station. It will drop you off at Al Musalla Bus Station but you can leave earlier to start sightseeing earlier on. Ajman has a relatively small and walkable center anyways.
Dubai – Umm Al Quwain: Getting to Umm Al Quwain is reportedly trickier. At the time I visited the UAE, thankfully, it was possible to do it by public transport somewhat easily. I basically went back to Ajman on another day and then get on UAQ1 (or 2) from its Al Musalla Bus Station. This minibus got me to the Lulu Center in Umm Al Quwain, from where you can catch the same bus back to Ajman. It costed me 15 AED one way to enjoy this short bus ride, which I paid in cash to the driver.
Dubai – Ras Al Khaimah: Unfortunately, no RTA bus went to Ras Al Khaimah when I visited the UAE. Therefore, I took a Ras Al Khaimah Transport Authority (RAKTA) bus instead. You can catch one in Dubai’s Union Bus Station, though you will have to pay the driver the 30 AED fee in cash instead of using your Nol card. This bus will get you to the Al Hamra Bus Station. You can find a return bus from there, but for that one, you can buy a ticket at the counter, and you can pay for that by card.
Costs for these trips ranged anywhere from 10 AED to 30 AED one way in my experience, though I was not careful at checking out how much did each trip cost me. I spent a bit over 300 AED on my Nol card over 13 days, and I used the said card not only to move around Dubai but also to pay for my daytrips to Al Ain, Sharjah, Fujairah, and Ajman, twice for the latter. I also used it once to get me from Abu Dhabi to Dubai in the first place. I do think that while it was not cheap, moving around the country comfortably in this fashion was also not expensive.
However, take all I write here with a grain of salt. UAE is a very well developed country, but it also keeps on developing. Some details regarding these trips, like the departure station for the bus to Fujairah, changed in the short period that I was in the country. To make sure that you always get the most recent information on these buses, do make sure to download apps like S’hail and RTA Dubai. They have the most recent piece of information in most cases, better than Google Maps at times.
A Note on Public Transportation Etiquette
Depending on where you are coming from, certain things in the Emirati public transport system may seem puzzling to you. I myself made a few mistakes when I was there, honest mistakes that one can easily avoid by reading the few remarks below:
- Let us begin with that honest mistake of mine. In the Emirates, in almost all public vehicles, the first few seats are reserved for women, elders, children, and families. This rule is enforced well enough in most parts of the country. If you sit down in one of those seats without knowing it, you will hear an announcement telling you to get up. This remains true even when the bus is full of men, but the front half of it is completely empty. People will literally stand on each other instead of moving forward slightly. Furthermore, in longer bus rides, this rule still remains intact. Do not attempt to sit in the front seats as a single man, there is a good chance you will be asked to move back regardless of whether anyone is coming to take your seat or not. There are also some female and children only metro carriages. You obviously should not enter those as a single man as well.
- Speaking of rules, rules in general are enforced quite well in the UAE. For example, if it is said that you need to wait inside the terminal for your bus, you better do so. You will not be put into prison for not doing so, obviously not, but you will not get onto your bus before going to the terminal and joining the queue they often create there, no matter whether you were “waiting outside earlier” or not. Similarly, there are red areas in buses on which you cannot stand. These are next to the moving parts of the doors. This is the case in many public transit systems across the world, though more often than not, nobody cares. In the UAE, they do care. If the driver notices anyone standing on those areas, he will not move until they stop obstructing the doors.
- Last but not least, do not forget to tap your card both before and after a ride, no matter where you are in the UAE. I am used to tapping the card once to pay, and only occasionally using a machine to get a refund if my ride was shorter than usual in some other countries that I visited so far, so this was news to me. It is not much of a hurdle though, just do not forget to use your card both at check in and check out when you use the public transportation in the UAE, and yes, this applies even if you have a weekly pass.
A Note on Walking
Well, as someone who loves walking, when people said that the UAE is “unwalkable” I took that as a challenge and ended up walking for over 320 kilometres over 15 days, my personal record so far. While I understand why some people may say so, I do believe that we need to be nuanced here. You see, some Emirati cities are very walkable, some are not. Ajman and Sharjah are quite walkable, so are the central parts of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Things certainly get a bit difficult when your route demands you to go over a creek or a highway in either one of these cities, which is when I often had to resort to use the public transportation system. Fujairah is an interesting case, because while I do not think that it is very walkable, I say so as someone who walked around all the important landmarks within its capital. I think the part that makes it somewhat unwalkable is just how far away its bus station is, for which you will surely need some sort of wheels. Umm Al Quwain, yet another Emirate I walked all around would be quite unwalkable for many. However, Ras Al Khaimah is the only Emirati capital that I would be able to confidently claim is unwalkable. Ras Al Khaimah is long, like, very long. In fact, if you consider all of its landmarks, it stretches almost as long as Dubai despite housing far fewer people, and as such, it is sparsely populated. There are at times tens of kilometres between two spots you want to visit, without any frequent bus routes in between the two, and no pavement for pedestrians, not that there are any pedestrians on the street. This is not a place you will want to go without a car, if you wish to explore it meaningfully. However, once again, do take what I say here with a grain of salt. While I may rant about walkability here and there, I did walk for 320 kilometres (enough to walk from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, and back) across eight cities of the UAE, and managed to visit about 95% of sites that I wanted to see with relative ease by relying on my feet and public transportation options, with the exception of two taxi rides I took in Ras Al Khaimah. Local municipalities are constantly improving the infrastructure of their cities, and with project like Etihad Rail nearing completion, and an emphasis on walking-friendly projects in multiple Emirates, I do believe that things will only get better for us budget travelers and locals in the near future.
All in all, I do hope that this guide is useful to all travellers who wish to visit the wonderful UAE, no matter whether you will rely on the public transport system almost exclusively like me or wish to use it to get from some Emirates to another one every now and then. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the UAE, and if they were not so well connected, I am certain that I would have had a rather dreadful time trying to see all that I wanted to see. This is to say, thanks to the hardworking people of transport authorities across the UAE, you sure do bring people closer!