Hessa Street rebuild finished: what the AED 690m upgrade means for JVC, Al Barsha and Arjan

In October 2023, Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) signed a AED 689m contract to rebuild Hessa Street, the main cross-connector between Sheikh Zayed Road and Al Khail Road that residents of JVC, Al Barsha and nearby districts use every morning. Two and a half years later, phase one is fully delivered and phase two is already under construction. Here is what changed, and for whom.

Phase one: what was delivered

RTA opened the work in stages: a one-kilometre bridge linking Hessa to Al Khail Road went live in December 2024, the main carriageway reached 90% completion in January 2026, and on 19 April 2026 RTA announced phase one complete. The result:

• 4.5km between Sheikh Zayed Road and Al Khail Road;
• four lanes each direction, up from two;
• capacity of 16,000 vehicles an hour in both directions, up from 8,000;
• the Sheikh Zayed Road–Al Khail Road run cut to about 4 minutes at peak, down from 15;
• four rebuilt intersections — at Sheikh Zayed Road, First Al Khail Street, Al Asayel Street and Al Khail Road — with flyovers over the Red Line metro;
• a 4.5-metre-wide, 13.5km cycling track connecting Al Sufouh to Dubai Hills.

RTA puts the total cost at "about AED 690m." The corridor serves Al Sufouh 2, Al Barsha and JVC, which are expected to house around 640,000 residents by 2030.

Phase two: east from Al Khail Road

In February 2026, RTA signed a contract for the continuation: 3km from Al Khail Road to Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road, including 8,835 metres of bridges and a 480-metre tunnel, plus a full rebuild of the Al Khail–Hessa interchange. Capacity on this stretch is planned to double, from 4,000 to 8,000 vehicles an hour, with travel time falling from 24 to about 5 minutes. Phase two serves districts with roughly 650,000 residents combined: JVC, Arjan, Dubai Science Park, Al Barsha South, JLT, Jumeirah Islands, Barsha Heights, The Greens and Emirates Hills. The same package includes 10.4km of cycling and scooter tracks from Dubai Hills to Motor City. RTA has not given a public completion date for phase two.

What it changes for each district

For JVC, traffic has been the community's biggest drawback in recent years: the district built out fast while entry and exit points stayed limited, so a 15–25-minute crawl to Sheikh Zayed Road ate into the appeal of cheaper rents. The rebuilt Hessa is the first of several road programmes here — RTA and Dubai Holding are also adding four new entry points to the community, covered in our JVC traffic fix piece.

For Al Barsha and Barsha Heights, the effect is more direct: journey times to Mall of the Emirates, Dubai Internet City and the Marina have shortened, making a Barsha address more workable for a downtown commute. Arjan should see its main benefit once phase two lands — the tunnel and interchange at Al Khail remove the district's principal exit bottleneck.

Worth a sober caveat: roads rarely lift prices on their own — they remove the discount attached to inconvenience. If a JVC unit is priced below comparable stock because of traffic, that gap should narrow gradually, but only once every piece, including the new entry points, is finished. And the flip side: expect diversions and noise along Hessa east of Al Khail while phase two is under construction.

If you're weighing districts along Hessa, start with the JVC and Al Barsha area pages for pricing and stock — and for Al Barsha as a transit-and-mall district in its own right, its area profile has the full picture.