Dubai: Almost three quarters of public buses in Dubai ran on time last year, an increase over the year before, the emirate’s Road and Transport Authority (RTA) announced on Sunday.
Over the same time frame, the number of bus passengers rose by more than 16 million, to 151 million in 2016.
The RTA’s chief said that this “remarkable growth” was due to an automated system that monitors 1,514 buses on 274 routes.
Meanwhile, taxi bookings made over the phone through the RTA’s dispatch system soared by 25.5 per cent, to 7.322 million telephone bookings made in 2016.
About 44 per cent of calls last year were responded to through the RTA’s automated system, which does not require the services of a human operator.
The average response time to incoming calls was just 30 seconds, said Mattar Al Tayer, Director-General and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).
“Such a response time is excellent given that the response time recorded in similar booking sections in countries like Canada is 45 seconds and the average call time is 53 seconds,” the transport chief added.
“Our average time of dispatching a taxi to a customer is 13.85 minutes whereas it takes about 18 minutes to dispatch a taxi in Australia and 15 minutes in Canada.”
