Dubai Walk: 6 000 km of pedestrian routes and 110 bridges by 2040
RTA has begun phase one of Dubai Walk: 12 km of routes, 5 km of cycle lanes and 11 transport interchange points. By 2040 — 6 000 km of pedestrian infrastructure across 160 districts and 110 bridges, lifting walking’s share of trips from 16% to 25%.
Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has launched phase one of Dubai Walk — a systematic rebuild of the city around the pedestrian. The first tranche is modest in numbers, but the programme as a whole reframes the task: a city designed around the car is turning towards the person on foot.
Phase one
- 12 km of pedestrian routes and 5 km of cycle lanes.
- 10 sites to be rebuilt as public spaces.
- 11 locations connected to transport — metro, buses and marine routes.
Where it leads by 2040
- 6 000 km of pedestrian infrastructure across 160 districts.
- 110 pedestrian bridges and crossings.
- Walking and personal-mobility trips from 16% in 2025 to 25% by 2040.
Why walkability is a money question
In cities where pedestrian infrastructure arrived after the buildings, the effect has been measured repeatedly: housing within walking distance of a connected pedestrian network prices above comparable housing without it. The reason is not romance but arithmetic — walkability adds to an apartment everything you can reach on foot: a café, a school, a metro station, a promenade.
For Dubai this matters more than most, because walkability has historically been the weak point. Distances, eight-lane arterials and eight months of heat made a car mandatory. Every bridge and every shaded route chips away at that — moving a district from "you need a car" towards "you can manage without one".
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What a buyer should watch
- Transport interchange beats route length. Eleven connection points to metro and buses in phase one is about whether you can walk to a station, not about where it is pleasant to stroll.
- The 160 districts benefit unevenly. The biggest gains go to places where today you can walk nowhere — that is where new connectivity is worth most.
- It is a long project with staged reporting. Like the mangrove programme, Dubai Walk publishes milestones — check the promises against those.
Based on data from Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).
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