Mobility
Why Jebel Ali is six times harder to reach by bus than the airport
By the Cooriroo AI team, 5 min read
One hour of public transport from Terminal 3 at DXB reaches 1,614 stops. The same hour from Jebel Ali Free Zone reaches 279.
Both places are among the busiest in Dubai. One moves passengers, the other moves freight, and the people who work in both have to get there every morning.
How we measured it
We turned the weekday morning timetable into a graph: 2,819 stops, the services between them, 5,676 walking links of up to 250 m and 303 published transfers. Waiting time is half the usual gap between departures at the boarding stop, capped at 15 minutes.
From each starting point we then counted every stop a person can reach within 60 minutes.
What it means for an operator
A warehouse in Jebel Ali draws its shift workers from a much smaller part of the city than an employer near the airport. For an operator this shows up as staff transport cost, late starts and a narrower pool of drivers.
What this does not show
It counts stops, not people or jobs. It uses the published timetable, not actual running times. Company buses, which carry many workers in Jebel Ali, are not in the data.
The full method and the other results are on the Dubai2Graph page.