Dubai: Two more Salik toll gates will be operational in Dubai from April 15, said a top official at the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).
One of the two new Salik gates will be installed near Al Mamzar Bridge on Al Ittihad Road—the busiest highway between Dubai and Sharjah while the second Salik gate is being installed on Airport Tunnel on Beirut Roads towards Twar side of Deira.
Motorists travelling on these roads will have to pay Dh4 each time they cross the Salik gates. At present, four Salik gates are operational in Dubai. They are located at Al Garhoud Bridge, Al Maktoum Bridge, Safa Toll Gate (Shaikh Zayed Road) and Al Barsha Toll Gate (Shaikh Zayed Road).
Mattar Al Tayer, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Executive Director of the RTA said: “The launch of Phase III of the Toll Gates System was made after conducting exhaustive traffic and field studies of the first and second phases of the Salik gates which were launched in 2007 and 2008 respectively.”
He said the decision has been taken to install gates after the lapse of more than one year since the operation of the Green Line of the Dubai Metro, and more than three years since the operation of the Red Line of the Dubai Metro. It also comes after the deployment of a sprawling network of public buses network and the opening of Al Khail Road Widening and Improvement Project.
The study, he said, also included examining the traffic congestions which are still being experienced by key roads in the Emirate, and sorting out appropriate solutions and alternatives for them.
Studies have proven that Salik has succeeded in slashing the trip time on the Shaikh Zayed Road by as much as 44%.
Salik has also succeeded in easing bottlenecks in Al Garhoud and Al Maktoum Bridges, thus the time needed to cross these bridges dropped from 20 minutes in 2007 to less than one minute at present.
