Voices of expatriate and bus user women in Abu Dhabi (UAE). Constraints and detour strategies

In the United Arab Emirates, urban development has followed the construction of a dense road network built to ensure economic development and better connectivity across the territory. However, an efficient intra-urban public transport system was lacking until the modernisation of the bus network, part of the Abu Dhabi 2030 Vision (UPC, 2007, DoT 2008). Abu Dhabi has grown to being a place of highest investment of benefits from an oil and gas economy in a car-centric urban development model, in a very highly socio-economic stratification. As a consequence, daily mobility is highly dependent on private and independent modes of transport. How does the non local women population of Abu Dhabi use the network in a transit unfriendly environment? This article aims at investigating the constraints and the detour strategies of the expatriate women in Abu Dhabi using the limited informal qualitative tools available for research.