Dubai sees 70% jump in car numbers

You might not have felt it thanks to the efficient road system on Dubai roads, but the emirate added more than 178,000 new cars in the first nine months of the year, according to official data.

Despite claims to the contrary, data from the Roads and Transport Authority published by the Dubai Statistics Centre (DSC) reveals that the number of light vehicles (primarily cars, excluding light buses and light mechanical vehicles) registered in Dubai during the first three quarters this year was 890,002, over 25 per cent or 178,018 more than the 711,984 registered in the whole of 2009.

When looked at year-on-year, the cars registered in Dubai during the first nine months of 2010 have recorded a 69 per cent jump from the 527,172 light vehicles registered in the first three quarters of 2009.

Overall, DSC data shows that the number of vehicles (all classes) on Dubai roads has surged 65 per cent year-on-year in the first nine months of this year to well over a million (1,029,634), from 624,462 vehicles registered in the first nine months of 2009.

The numbers clearly discredit theories that the smoother-flowing traffic on Dubai roads (compared with the rush-hour jams of 2007/08) is due to a decrease in the number of cars on the roads.

The data also throws another interesting trend – with Dubai’s population reaching 1.871 million by the end of Q3 2010 (according to DSC data) and more than 890,000 light vehicles in the emirate, it means that there is one car for every two residents in Dubai. If one were to add the potential number of cars that would registered in Q4 2010, the ratio would perhaps become even sharper.
 

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