For every two Dubai residents, there is one car

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By Shafaat Shahbandari, Staff Reporter  www.gulfnews.com

Dubai: For every two people in Dubai, there is a vehicle, putting vehicle density in the city higher than some of the biggest urban centres in the world.

Image Credit: Virendra Saklani/Gulf News archives Heavy flow of traffic during morning rush hour at Shaikh Zayed road toward Dubai.

According to stats provided by the Roads and Transport Authority, Dubai’s vehicle density of 540 per 1,000 people is the highest in the region and one of the highest in the world.

The number of vehicles in Dubai has doubled in the last eight years from 740,000 at the end of 2006 to 1.4 million at the end of 2014, an average annual increase of 8.2 per cent, which is also one of the highest in the world.

“At 8.2 per cent, the average annual increase of vehicles in Dubai is very high. If this same annual increase rate continues in future, the number of registered vehicles in Dubai can reach around 2.22 million vehicles in the year 2020,” said Nasser Abu Shehab, Director of Strategic Transport Planning at RTA.

Adding to the cars registered in Dubai, studies conducted by RTA show that around 450,000 vehicles enter Dubai on an average daily, with the city welcoming 40,000 vehicles in the morning peak hour every day.

The majority of these vehicles — around 33,500 in the morning peak hour and 370,000 on an average weekday — enter Dubai from the northern emirates. More info