How Etihad Rail Will Change Where We Live and Work

**Tim Elliott** (0:01)
So, Morning Drive, David Mackenzie is back, he's the Big Wheel, he is El Grande Pueblo. I made that one up yesterday. In my head, I heard myself saying El Grande Pueblo, and I thought that meant something. I think it means Big Village.

**David Mackenzie** (0:17)
Big Village?

**Tim Elliott** (0:18)
Doesn't quite apply. Sounds great though.

**David Mackenzie** (0:20)
I've been in the gym a bit, so maybe Big Village is a good thing.

**Tim Elliott** (0:23)
I wasn't going there.
I wasn't thinking about that at all. Happy birthday.

**David Mackenzie** (0:28)
Thank you.

**Tim Elliott** (0:29)
Yeah. Which is the reason why you weren't here last week. We did miss you.

**David Mackenzie** (0:32)
Thank you. I actually missed you, but I was with my wife, so as much as I loved being with you two, the wife was better.

**Tim Elliott** (0:38)
Yeah. I can imagine. Yeah. You have to say that though, don't you?

**David Mackenzie** (0:42)
Yeah, because she's listening.

**Tim Elliott** (0:43)
She's watching.
So recruitment and HR and jobs are more now. How was the staycation, by the way, before you?

**David Mackenzie** (0:50)
Really good. I went to this place, a very short segue. I went to a place called Al Wathbar on the Abu Dhabi border. It's a place I've never heard about. It's beautiful. The service was amazing. It's a Marriott Hotel. I really loved it.
The staff were fantastic. They kept giving me birthday gifts and stuff. It was really nice.

**Tim Elliott** (1:09)
What kind of birthday gifts did they give you?

**David Mackenzie** (1:10)
They gave me a little cake. Then when I...

**Tim Elliott** (1:12)
To a car or?

**David Mackenzie** (1:13)
No. They did a little sign and they'd written on it like an ink thing. They spoke my name wrong, but I'm good with that. It was David and it was really nice.
They gave me fruit platters and stuff. It was really nice. That's lovely. It was a proper old school Dubai service.

**Tim Elliott** (1:31)
And a real getaway, so very chilled, I'm guessing.

**David Mackenzie** (1:34)
Very nice.

**Tim Elliott** (1:35)
Yeah, nothing to bother you. Well, welcome back.

**David Mackenzie** (1:37)
Thank you.

**Tim Elliott** (1:38)
So today, you sent me an article this week and it was all about Etihad Rail. That's been kind of the big announcement this week, certainly in this country. So passenger services have begun. You can get all the way from Abu Dhabi to Fijira now. More stations are going to open.
It's about 57 minutes to go Abu Dhabi to Dubai.

**David Mackenzie** (1:58)
Is that how much it is? I didn't realize how much the time was.

**Tim Elliott** (2:00)
At the moment, Abu Dhabi to Dubai is 57 minutes, but they're saying that they're a future high-speed plan, so that could cut to, get this, 30 minutes.

**David Mackenzie** (2:10)
This is odd. This is an odd thing I got really excited about. And I think it's because I'm from the UK originally, despite being here 20 odd years. But trains, to me, are what's missing here in terms of the work life. Because if you think about it at the moment, we are, the economy is hamstrung a bit by location, because as you well know, Dubai is building and building and building and building, and yet our centers are very small. It's a very small country, and yet we've got thousands and thousands of miles of desert that if you get the trains sorted and get the mass transit sorted, it will open up the country to business, to better accommodation, cheaper accommodation, nicer places to live, et cetera, which won't cost a fortune.

**Tim Elliott** (2:58)
It's a very good point.
There's a real, there's something about train travel when you're working as well. I've done the commuting thing, London commuting thing. Something about that, that's another aspect of it. But you're right, it adds so much that you kind of didn't realize you didn't have.

**David Mackenzie** (3:16)
Yeah.

**Tim Elliott** (3:17)
Do you know what I mean?

**David Mackenzie** (3:17)
Well, you think about everywhere.
Obviously, as always, I do a bit of stats on this thing. So I figured out how many people travel into London every single day. Just get a wild guess. Faradji, I don't know if you know this. So in London, London's the main city, obviously, of the UK, but majority of the workers travel in because it's too expensive to live in London. Guess how many people per day?

**Tim Elliott** (3:40)
Travel in from all over the place.

**David Mackenzie** (3:42)
This is, so you've got super travelers, which are 90 minutes plus, commuters, which is an hour plus, and then you've got local residents, which takes, you know, you go on metro, tubes. We call them tubes, obviously.