The only colour is where you may ride.
Dubai Cycle is a free iPhone app that guides you by bike in Dubai, turn by turn, on cycle tracks first. It is built to avoid any road with a speed limit above 60 km/h.
Coming to the App Store this autumn.
- Cycle tracks
- Walk with your bike
- Streets the app may use
Dubai's cycle network as the app knows it, drawn from open data. Track data © RTA via Data Dubai open data · Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).
How it works
Tell it how long you have, 20, 45 or 90 minutes, or where you are going. It shows up to three rides.
Routes ride cycle tracks first. Where tracks don't join, they use walking links and streets with a limit of 60 km/h or less, and the app tells you which is which.
A sign, not a screen.
Guidance reads like a road sign: one heavy arrow drawn for bikes, one number, and a bar that empties as the turn comes closer. Under 20 m it simply says Now.
You understand it in a glance at 25 km/h, in full sun, without reading a word.
One line tells you what's under your wheels.
Your route is one continuous ribbon. Its pattern changes with what you ride on, so you can tell a cycle track from a street at a glance, even in greyscale. The part you have ridden turns grey behind you.
A street's limit comes from a posted sign when we know one. Otherwise it is worked out from the type of street, and that can be wrong. Always obey the posted sign.
- Cycle trackSolid blue.
- StreetHollow: a limit of 60 km/h or less, as far as we know.
- Busy roadDashed centre: a posted limit of 41 to 60 km/h. Keep right.
- WalkDots: a footbridge, an underpass, steps or a crossing. Walk with your bike.
- GapNothing at all: the track stops at a road.
- Cycle trackAnd the track goes on.
Feel the turn in your pocket.
Before each turn the phone pulses: once for left, twice for right. Through a jersey, in the wind, next to traffic, you know the side without looking.
Lock the screen and the voice carries on, which also saves battery.
- Left
- Right
Where the track stops, you decide.
Some tracks stop at a road and start again on the other side. Dubai Cycle draws no line across the road. It shows where the track continues, and you decide how to get there. It never tells you where to cross.
Cross only at a legal crossing, such as a pedestrian crossing, a footbridge or an underpass, and follow its signals. If there is no legal crossing in sight, do not cross: turn back or choose another route.
Also in the app
Shade, counted
Each ride it proposes says how much of it is in shade at this hour.
Works offline
The cycling network is on your phone, so routes and voice guidance work without a connection. The background map may not load.
No score, no badge
When you arrive, the ride you just did is drawn as one line on the city. That's all.
No account. No ads. Your ride never leaves your phone as a ride.
Routes and place searches are worked out on your phone. To improve the map, the app can send anonymous pieces of the tracks you ride, never where a ride starts or ends. It is on by default, and one switch turns it off.