Dubai: A new crackdown has netted bus fare dodgers and other offenders with regard to public transport in Dubai.
The Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) on Wednesday said its ongoing Rasid campaign recently found a series of violations, including fare evasion and misuse of buses, bus stations and air-conditioned shelters. Some of the violations involved drivers as well.
However, the RTA did not provide details on the number and type of violations or fines issued as a result of the crackdown. Failure to pay the bus fare — done by swiping the Nol payment card when boarding — carries a fine of Dh200.
The minimum public transport fare in Dubai is Dh3 and the maximum is Dh7.5.
Rasid, which means to watch over something, was undertaken by the Monitoring and Transport Activities Department of the RTA’s Public Transport Agency “to monitor the daily negative practices witnessed by this sector, and issue fines in a bid to curb them”.
The RTA has managed to curb fare evasion by 25 per cent since Rasid was launched in January 2015, thanks to sophisticated sensors installed in buses that capture passengers who board and alight from the bus per stop, per route. The data is then compared with the Nol check-in and check-out transaction to identify the fare evader.
So far, 100 buses have been fitted with the sensors and eventually all buses will be able to catch evaders, the RTA said.
Abdullah Al Mahri, director of Monitoring and Transport Activities Department, said: “The ultimate purpose of the campaign is to report negative practices, be it by bus drivers, riders, or users of public transport facilities, and report the applicable offences in a bid to curb these practices.”
Al Mahri called on bus riders to comply with the rules governing the use of these facilities, and stressed the importance of paying the applicable fares through Nol cards.
The RTA operates more 1,400 buses running on 100 routes, transporting several million riders per month.
