Table of Contents
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What does an other land transport business do?
Other land transport business provides land-based passenger transport other than rail, running urban and suburban passenger services on scheduled routes with fixed timetables and stops.
2. What modes of transport fall under this activity?
It includes scheduled passenger services by modes such as motorbus, tram, streetcar, and trolleybus, along with town-to-airport and town-to-station lines.
3. What is a feeder service in land transport?
A feeder service is a scheduled passenger service that connects suburban areas and neighbourhoods to transit hubs and main transport routes.
4. Who uses scheduled land transport in the UAE?
Commuting workers, students, and residents making repeated daily journeys between homes, workplaces, campuses, and transit hubs use scheduled land transport.
5. How widely used is public land transport in the UAE?
Dubai's public transport and shared mobility services carried 747.1 million riders in 2024, a 6.4 percent increase, with daily ridership above two million.
How to Start an Other Land Transport Business with Meydan Free Zone
A city the size of Dubai cannot run on private cars alone. Every working day, millions of journeys are made on scheduled land transport: buses on fixed routes, trams, and feeder services connecting neighbourhoods to transit hubs. Other land transport is the activity behind that scheduled movement of people, and ridership in the UAE has been climbing year after year.
Dubai's public transport and shared mobility services carried 747.1 million riders in 2024, a 6.4 percent increase on the 702 million recorded in 2023, according to the Roads and Transport Authority¹. Average daily ridership crossed two million. The bus network alone has expanded from 2,095 kilometres in 2006 to 3,974 kilometres in 2024, supported by a modern fleet of around 1,400 low-emission buses², a measure of how steadily scheduled land transport has grown to match a rising population.
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A Population That Moves on Scheduled Transport
The UAE has built one of the most heavily used public transport systems in the region. The numbers behind it show how much daily life depends on scheduled land transport.
Sources: Roads and Transport Authority (2025); UAE Government Media Office (2025).
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The demand for scheduled land transport keeps rising. Dubai's public transport and shared mobility services carried 747.1 million riders in 2024, up 6.4 percent on the year before¹, and daily ridership has crossed two million. Behind those numbers are ordinary, repeating journeys: workers commuting to industrial and commercial districts, students travelling to campuses, and residents moving between neighbourhoods and transit hubs.
A growing population makes the pattern denser every year. Scheduled bus and feeder services, staff transport on fixed routes, and community transport all sit within this activity, and the volume of daily journeys is large enough that demand extends well beyond the main public network.
Land transport in the UAE runs inside a planned, integrated mobility network. Transport authorities set the routes, schedules, and standards that scheduled services are built around, and the network is designed so that buses, feeder services, and transit lines connect into one another. For an operator, that planning is the opportunity: a scheduled service does not have to create demand from nothing, because it plugs into a network that already moves millions of people on predictable patterns every day.
From scheduled bus routes and feeder services to staff and community transport, the UAE rewards land transport operators that move people reliably on fixed routes and timetables.
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Who is this for?
- Scheduled bus service operators: Operators running passenger services on fixed routes and timetables across urban and suburban areas.
- Feeder and community transport operators: Operators running services that connect neighbourhoods and communities to transit hubs and main transport routes.
- Staff and institutional transport operators: Operators running scheduled passenger transport on fixed routes for employers, campuses, and institutions.
Meydan Free Zone offers 100% foreign ownership, zero percent corporate tax on qualifying income, full profit repatriation, and a fully digital licensing process, providing a regulated and cost-efficient base from which to operate scheduled land transport services in a fast-growing mobility market.
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4920.00 - Other Land Transport
Under this activity, you are licensed to provide land-based passenger transport other than rail transport, in the form of urban and suburban passenger transport services.
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There are clear boundaries on this activity. The classification excludes passenger transport by inter-urban railways, which is classified separately. This activity is land-based passenger transport within urban and suburban areas on scheduled routes; it does not extend to inter-urban rail services.
The line is precise. If your business runs scheduled urban or suburban passenger transport on fixed routes and timetables, you are in. If you operate inter-urban railway passenger services, you are not.
Third-Party Approval: No third-party approval is required for this business activity.
Anti-Money Laundering Compliance: This business activity is exempt from AML compliance requirements.
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Footnotes
¹ Roads and Transport Authority. 747 Million Riders Used Public Transport, Shared Mobility, and Taxis in 2024. RTA, February 2025.
² UAE Government Media Office. 747 Million Riders Used Public Transport, Shared Mobility, and Taxis in 2024. UAE Government Media Office, February 2025.
