Dubai: Imagine the population of Dubai, which is two million, and multiply it by 100 times. The answer you get is seven million short of the actual number of passengers that have been served by the Roads and Transport Authority in just the first six months of the year.
Mattar Al Tayer, Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), has revealed that more and more commuters opted to use of public transport in the emirate during the first half of 2012. From 180,544,372 passengers in 2011, the number of passengers rose by around 15 per cent to 207.48 million.
“The healthy growth in the public transport users reflects the evolution under way in the culture of using public transport means by all spectrums of the community, particularly with the availability of the Metro service,” Al Tayer said.
“The huge investments made by the Dubai Government for the sake of developing the infrastructure of the transport sector have proved both successful and effective,” he added.
Al Tayer said that this drive contributed to the realisation of a strategic objective of the RTA which is to minimise the use of private vehicles and augment the use of mass transit means from six per cent in 2009 to 30 per cent in 2030. The rate prevailing in 2011 was 10 per cent.
As per the Dubai Strategic Plan (Infrastructure Sector), RTA has been fully focused on improving mass transit systems to make them the first choice of mobility for commuters in the emirate. Of all available public transport system, the Dubai Metro clocked in the most number of passengers moved from January to June this year.
“The number of commuters using the Dubai Metro [Red and Green Lines] during the past six months hit 53.04 million passengers, compared to 28.98 million passengers during the same period last year,” Al Tayer said.
Deira City Centre, Mall of the Emirates, Union and Khalid Bin Al Waleed Stations served the highest number of commuters on the Red Line while Al Fahidi, Bani Yas and Al Ghubaiba stations took the lion’s share in the total number of commuters on the Green Line.
While public buses saw a slight decrease in patrons over the last six months from 54.07 million passengers in 2011 to 53.53 million this year, commuting within Dubai still accounted for the largest share of passenger traffic recording 39.52 million passengers.
Of the various water transit modes, the abra was the most popular for more than six million commuters. This number, together with those who took the Water Bus, Water Taxi and Ferry Dubai, make up about three per cent of the total commuters in the emirate for the same period.
Taxis operating in the emirate, meanwhile, made 47.65 trips lifting about 94 million passengers.
