RTA opens new Oud Metha bridge, travel time falls to 5 minutes

The new crossing lifts Oud Metha Street's total capacity by 50%, from 10,400 to 15,600 vehicles an hour in both directions. RTA says the change cuts travel time along the corridor from 20 minutes to 5 minutes, a 75% drop for drivers who use the route daily.

Two other upgrades opened alongside the bridge. The right-turn lanes from Sheikh Rashid Road onto Oud Metha Street grew from two lanes to three, taking their capacity to 4,000 vehicles an hour. An existing bridge from Al Khail Road also widened, from two lanes to three, raising its capacity from 2,200 to 3,300 vehicles an hour. A nearby left-turn ramp now handles 1,800 vehicles an hour.

RTA says the wider Oud Metha and Al Asayel project is now 90% complete. Two tunnels, with a combined length of 4,300 meters, are due to open by the end of August this year. One tunnel will connect Oud Metha Street's service road to the Sheikh Rashid Road intersection for traffic heading toward Bur Dubai. The other will carry traffic from Dubai-Al Ain Road toward Al Wasl Club Street, addressing a stretch where the two flows currently overlap and cause backups during peak hours.

A separate bridge, also part of this phase, will give drivers a dedicated left turn from Al Asayel Street onto Oud Metha Street, removing another point where traffic currently merges and slows down.

The bridge and tunnels are part of the wider Sheikh Rashid Corridor Development Project, which covers 14 kilometers of road improvements across four major intersections. RTA built the corridor to serve Zabeel, Al Jaddaf, Oud Metha, Umm Hurair, Latifa Hospital and Al Wasl Club, an area RTA expects to house more than 420,000 residents by 2030. Those neighborhoods sit among Dubai's busiest daily traffic generators, with a major hospital, a private members' club and dense residential towers all feeding onto the same handful of junctions RTA has now widened.

Mattar Al Tayer, RTA's director-general and chairman of the board of executive directors, said: "The project will increase the capacity of Oud Metha Street from 10,400 vehicles per hour in both directions to 15,600 vehicles per hour, an increase of 50 per cent." He added that the project is one of the authority's key infrastructure projects aimed at enhancing Dubai's road network.

Residents who commute along Al Khail Road, Oud Metha Street or Al Asayel Street should notice lighter traffic and shorter journeys right away. RTA expects the remaining relief from the two tunnels to arrive within about a month, once the wider project reaches completion.

For residents who rely on this corridor for work or school runs, the bridge alone should already shave minutes off a regular trip, with the tunnels adding further relief once they open. Given how fast Zabeel, Al Jaddaf and the surrounding neighborhoods are growing, RTA says the extra capacity is designed to keep pace with demand well beyond this year.