Editorial Policy
Every figure on this site comes from an RTA page or PDF, is stored in a data file with its source and the date it was fetched, and is checked by 32 test cases that run on every build. This page explains how that works, what gets labelled as unconfirmed and how corrections are handled.
Where the numbers come from
RTA's own pages sit at the top of the source list: the nol Fares page, the Choose nol and About nol pages, the timetable, the About Dubai Metro page and the individual service pages for top ups, passes and card requests. Below those come Dubai Media Office releases, then the established UAE press for things RTA announces without publishing, such as holiday hours. Wikipedia is used only for history, mainly station renames and opening dates, and never for a fare.
No number is typed into a template. Fares, pass prices, card prices, top up minimums, fines, timings and station data all live in data files, and the pages carry placeholders that pull from them. A fare edited in one place changes on every page that quotes it, which removes the most common failure mode on sites like this one: one page updated and eleven left behind. Each record carries its source name, link and fetch date.
The primary sources are public and worth reading directly: RTA nol Fares for every fare and pass price, the RTA timetable page for operating hours, and the RTA metro and tram timetable PDF for first and last trains per station. Where a figure comes from anywhere else, the page names that source in the sentence.
Zones, journey times and other derived figures
RTA publishes no station by station zone table, so station zones are read from the shading on the official rail network map published in December 2025. Stations drawn on a boundary, such as Danube and Jumeirah Golf Estates, are recorded as boundary stations and treated in the way that gives the lower zone count. Boundary readings around the creek are flagged in our notes as needing a field check.
Journey times are derived from RTA's own timetable rather than estimated. The edge time between two stations is the difference between their consecutive last train times in the metro and tram timetable, serial REG_20251215, averaged over both directions. Interchange penalties, such as the walk and wait at Union or the bridge between the tram and the metro, are assumptions, and they are labelled as assumptions in the data.
What gets tested on every build
32 test cases run before the site is built. They cover fares for named pairs of stations, zone counts, transfers that stay inside the 30 minute window and transfers that fall outside it, the daily cap, pass break even points, first and last train times, today's opening hours and the tag ID format. A failure stops the build.
All the tools share one engine and one data set, so the fare calculator, the route planner and the pass calculator cannot quote three different prices for the same trip. That is not what we found when we rebuilt three of the most popular NOL calculators to compare them.
What we label rather than assert
The daily fare cap is the clearest case. AED 20 on a Silver or Blue card and AED 40 on a Gold card was set in RTA's 2014 tariff revision, reported at the time by Gulf News, and it is not restated on the current RTA fares page. It stays on the site because riders rely on it, and it carries a label saying where it comes from. The same applies to the short trip rule from that same revision.
Ramadan and Eid hours are press sourced, because RTA announces them rather than publishing them on the timetable page, and they say so on the page. Where no official figure exists at all, we print no number: there is no published charge for a missed check out and no official headway table, so this site quotes neither, however often other sites do.
Project figures for the Blue Line and Gold Line carry the release and month they came from, and a widely repeated progress number we cannot trace to RTA is left out. The disclaimer covers the same ground in shorter form.
Corrections, dates and independence
Corrections get made when they are reported and when we spot them ourselves, usually within the same week. Send the page, the figure you saw and where you saw it, and the change is checked against the stored source. Report an error here. If a fix changes what a page says materially, the date on the page moves with it.
Dates shown on pages are real. Legal pages carry a genuine effective date that only changes when the text changes, and guides carry a review date rather than a number invented to look fresh.
The site is funded by advertising, and advertisers have no involvement in what the data says or which figure a page quotes. Nobody pays to appear in a comparison table here.