RTA records more than 180m passengers

Dubai's public transport system carried over 180 million passengers in the first half of this year, a senior transport official has announced. Mattar Al Tayer, Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), revealed that the mass transit system buses, water transport and taxi cabs ferried a total of 180,544,372 passengers in the first half of this year. He added that this number was likely to increase considerably with the opening of the Metro's Green Line in September. "The RTA has made strenuous efforts to upgrade mass transit systems in Dubai to make them the first choice of commuters within the emirate to realise one of the core objectives of the RTA; which is reducing the use of private vehicles and increasing the use of mass transit means from 6 per cent in 2009 to as much as 30 per cent in 2020 and this rate clocked 11 per cent in 2011," said Al Tayer. "The number of public bus commuters in the first half of 2011 hit 54,077,652 passengers where bus transport service within Dubai city accounted for 42,329,663 passengers, followed by Metro stations' feeder bus service (6,109,602 passengers) and inter-city bus service (5,638,387 passengers). "Over the last six months, Dubai Metro lifted about 28,986,110 passengers with March recording the highest number of commuters amounting to 5.094 million passengers, and passenger count over the remaining four months ranged from 4.6 million passengers to 4.959 million passengers per month. Al Ittihad and Khalid Bin Al Waleed Stations had the lion's share in the number of Metro users as Al Ittihad Station served 3,288,388 passengers, followed by Khalid Bin Al Waleed Station (3,049,528 passengers), Deira City Centre Station (2,360,628 passengers), Mall of the Emirates Station (1,969,501 passengers), and Al Rigga Station (1,830,391 passengers). "Marine transit modes comprising abras, water bus and water taxi lifted in the first half of last year 7,291,712 passengers shared between abras (7,088,516 passengers), water bus (197,485 passengers) and water taxi (5,708 passengers). "Taxi cabs operating in Dubai made 45,094,449 trips lifting 90,188,898 passengers in the last six months. Dubai Taxi cabs alone have made about 18,003,000 trips lifting about 36 million passengers while franchise companies' taxicabs (National Taxi, Cars Taxi, Metro Taxi and Arabia Taxi) have made 27,091,520 trips lifting 54,183,058 passengers. "The huge investments injected by Dubai government in upgrading the transport system infrastructure proved both successful and effective. The rising number of mass transport commuters illustrates the evolution in the culture of using mass transit means by the public representing various spectrums of the community particularly with the availability of the Metro service. Using public transport has multiple benefits," Al Tayer said. From / Gulf News