When it comes to transportation, Dubai wants the weirdest and the wildest — even if it doesn’t always get around to actually building them. This is the place that trialled hoverbikes for police, after all.
At the World Government Summit earlier this month, Dubai revealed its latest round of wacky transport ideas, from a flying boat to a trackless tram — and of course, Elon Musk’s Loop.
On one hand it’s positive that Dubai and the wider UAE is investing in the future of mass transport. On the other hand, its two major cities continue to suffer serious traffic problems despite the headlines about hoverbikes and hyperloops.
Indeed, previous plans include a hyperloop, that would in part link Dubai and Abu Dhabi in eight minutes. That initially failed after partner company Hyperloop One shut down, but was reportedly revived by Hyperloop TT, though reports suggest little work has been done since COVID.
In the meantime, the UAE has started to roll out networks for Etihad Rail, an electric rail service that hopes to connect the two cities with a half hour journey by 2030 — a move that might actually help reduce its increasingly problematic congestion — while its metro line is also set for an extension, though not for another decade.
It may be dull, but existing technologies are a smarter way to provide actual mass transport than otherwise untested designs — trains work because they exist, unlike hyperloops. But Dubai is a city that likes to be the first, so the as-yet failure of hyperloop in the region hasn’t put it off trying out weird ideas.
Here’s a quick look at the Dubai future transport technologies announced at the conference and throughout 2024.
Musk’s Loop
The Tesla founder video-called into the conference to announce a joint project to build the Dubai Loop, the first followup to the one in Vegas. Musk said it would be like a “wormhole” taking drivers from one part of the city to another. If built, the first stage will include 11 stations over ten miles.
As yet, it’s unclear if it will mirror the Vegas Loop, in which pedestrians climb aboard a Tesla to ride through the tunnel, or if Dubai citizens will be able to simply drive through it with electric cars like any other tunnel. But it’s worth noting that the Vegas loop has fallen shy of its own plans: only two stations have been built and the Teslas require human drivers at the wheel.
So it’s no surprise that when I asked Gareth Dennis, a railway engineer and author of How the Railways will Fix the Future, what he thought: “obviously bad, it’s just a buried queue of taxis.” Indeed, it’s unclear why building this idea elsewhere will solve such challenges, but perhaps the second time’s the charm — especially if regulatory approvals prove easier and funding is more generous.
RailBus, the Trackless Tram and FLOC electric pods
Dubai is also considering a trio of light-rail options, though they’re basically futuristic trams.
To start, what if you took a bus and put it on rails? The RailBus isn’t a bus at all, but a single autonomous carriage that can carry 40 people. It runs along tracks, apparently in the road, but also on dedicated infrastructure, and those tracks are — in the renderings, at least — covered in solar panels.
Dennis notes that the RailBus is “an actual thing, in that it’s a vehicle relying on steel on steel — ie, a railway.”
That said, why not build a better railway? The American company behind the technology, RailBus, claims on its website that the RailBus is lighter with more flexible operations, meaning it slashes infrastructure costs by a fifth versus a comparable metro system. The aim is to roll out small, simple stations every 2km or so in order to provide good coverage.
The FLOC design, from the UK’s Urban Mass, is pushing the idea of mobility as a service via flexible services: lightweight electric pods run on elevated networks — not dissimilar to RailBus there — but have the neat trick of being able to link up into longer trains. The idea is that smaller pods could come from suburban areas and join up as they enter more densely populated urban areas.
In the longer term, the plan, according to UrbanMass’ website, is to allow the autonomous pods to not only run on the elevated guideways but also on public roads, offering an on-demand, door-to-door service — of course, that relies on full autonomy and requires the pods to meet road safety requirements. “It’s kind of like the best of both worlds, to use micro mobility and marry it to larger forms of mass mobility,” says Sergio Cecutta, analyst at SMG Consulting, “It’s an interesting idea.”
And then there’s the Trackless Tram — essentially buses or trams guided by autonomous systems on roads or guideways, rather than along rails. But Dennis notes: “Firstly, there is no such thing as a trackless tram. This is an extremely expensive bus. Secondly, this system has already been junked. It was first developed and deployed in China, where it was rapidly discovered why mass transit needs rails — the optical guidance system kept wheels in the same place which rapidly destroyed the road surface. Trials in Indonesia were terminated early and sent back as these issues had been played down.”
In short, regardless of which system Dubai actually choses (if any), the aim is to offer some sort of futuristic design riffing on trams — let’s call them what they are — that are cheaper and easier to install, without disrupting traffic and in a more sustainable, flexible format. Trams are great, so there’s no reason not to tweak them and roll them out.
But as Dennis notes, other technologies already do that — and don’t require a multi-year technical study first. “Conventional trams exist, are better, and don’t rely on any proprietary technologies.”
Seaglider
Given Dubai is set along the coast, why not use boats? This is the UAE, so those boats can’t just be boats — they’re seagliders instead. These are hovering electric boat planes — known as electric hydrofoil craft — that will be able to dash over the water from Dubai to Abu Dhabi in just half an hour, with services expected from 2027.
Regent Craft, the company making the flying boats, said the idea makes sense as 85% of the UAE’s population lives along the coast and two thirds travel between coastal destinations monthly — but right now, they do that via cars on the road. The ticket is predicted to cost $45 dollars, and may eventually link up islands that are currently only accessible by flights, the company said.
While the renders of the vehicles themselves suggest a high-tech futuristic machine, these are at their heart an old idea: ferries. By making them electric, Regent offers a more sustainable solution than traditional maritime vessels, and by using hydrofoils to pull the bulk of the boat out of the water, they can “fly” at speeds of up to 180mph (300mph).
This idea has actual merit, and is much easier to make happen than digging massive tunnels in the ground (or, indeed, laying rail). Hawaii has reportedly eyed the idea positively, and rival Candela has its electric hydrofoil vessels already operating in Stockholm, Sweden, with plans for Lake Tahoe in the US, as well as Saudi Arabia and New Zealand.
Flying Taxis
This one isn’t actually new — but Dubai’s wild transport ideas are so out there that “flying cars” might just be the most likely, though they’re simply electric helicopter-style aircraft that are quieter and cheaper to fly. “Air taxis do seem like they’re futuristic, but they’re very down to earth,” says Cecutta. “I mean, they’re basically an airplane that happens to fly electric and inside the same city.”
Dubai has been talking up the idea of flying taxis for years now, and plans to offer commercial services beginning next year using Joby’s aircraft. Those plans are actually starting to take shape: the General Civil Aviation Authority has approved locations for the first vertiports and begun planning flight routes, while building work has commenced at the local airport.
Does the idea have potential? Dubai could pull this off and become the first city to offer commercial services: Cecutta says it’s feasible, but the timing relies on aviation authorities and certification, and that likely relies on waiting for the US FAA to approve these aircraft first.
But what remains to be seen is how useful small aircraft can be at alleviating traffic when they can only seat four passengers each. “You will need a lot of them, thousands of them, in order to make a dent [in traffic] on the ground,” Cecutta says. “Let’s say there’s four people driving now, and four people are in one of these airplanes — so you’ve taken four cars off the road. Even if you fly 100 times a day, you’ve taken 400 cars off the road… maybe it’s never going to make a difference, compared to other forms of transportation, at least.”
Future of transport?
Dubai’s various trials are great news for future transport startups that need a test hub, expos and conferences to show off to investors, and a bit of funding. But it’s clear that ideas that look to improve existing formats — electric helicopters and ferries, easier to install trams — have a lot more merit than simply digging a tunnel for yet more cars.
Cecutta notes that there is merit in skipping over legacy systems for smarter ideas, but addes he would have expected a high-speed train linking Dubai with Abu Dhabi by now. “I think that’s a very good use case,” he says — much better than sitting in traffic
While these ideas go through testing, hopefully Dubai continues to roll out actual trains rather than rely solely on trials that may well fail. Trains may offer a less exciting vision of the future of transport — and win fewer headlines — but the promised half hour trip between Dubai and Abu Dhabi is much better than sitting hours in car traffic.
