Sheikh Zayed Road
The Sheikh Zayed Road ( Arabic شارع الشيخ زايد Shari'ah-Sheikh Zayed , DMG Šāriʿ aš-Šaiḫ Zāyid , formerly Trade Center Road ) is the largest and most famous street in Dubai ( United Arab Emirates ). The expressway has developed into the main traffic axis of the desert city in recent years and connects almost all parts of modern Dubai. It runs parallel to the coastline from the roundabout at the World Trade Center to the border with the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in the Jabal Ali area . Use of the road is partly subject to a toll .
Location and structure
The expressway, which is 52 km long to the Abu Dhabi border, has several very large transport hubs. Sheikh Zayed Road is mostly six lanes wide in each direction, plus secondary lanes running parallel. It is almost exclusively geared towards motorized individual traffic ; there are only a few bridges and underpasses for pedestrians to cross the street. In some places it is necessary to drive several kilometers to change the side of the road. The metro, which runs on viaducts on the southern side for almost the entire length of Sheikh Zayed Road, also offers an overpass for pedestrians at each of its stops.
The strong focus on motorized traffic up to now has meant that the Sheikh Zayed Road has not yet developed any real metropolitan flair, despite its increasingly dense development: the separate sides hardly communicate with each other, the pedestrian feels left alone and is forced to move in the immediate vicinity of his high-rise area.
History and Development
The largely undeveloped street, then known as Trade Center Road , was repaired at the end of the 1990s and named after the former President of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan . As a result, many of Dubai's skyscrapers, such as the Burj Khalifa or the Emirates Towers, that have been built in recent years were built, especially in the first section of the expressway between transport hubs one and two . In the further course more and more skyscrapers were built, which also connect to the new downtown Dubai . The development of the street is reminiscent of the development of the Las Vegas Strip , along which life also spreads into the desert, making the original city center increasingly meaningless.
Large shopping centers such as the Ibn Battuta Shopping Mall , the Mall of the Emirates or the Dubai Marina Mall are on Sheikh Zayed Road, as are the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC), Dubai Internet City (DIC) and Dubai Media City (DMC) .
Individual evidence
- ↑ salik.ae: List of toll stations , accessed on June 9, 2010.
- ↑ http://www.difc.ae
- ↑ http://www.dubaiinternetcity.com/
- ↑ http://www.dubaimediacity.com/
Web links
Coordinates: 25 ° 13 ′ 6 ″ N , 55 ° 16 ′ 48 ″ E