Video: RTA opens Oud Metha model bus station in Dubai

“The construction of stations for public bus riders complements the efforts of RTA to upgrade public transport infrastructure and encourage people to use public transit means in their daily movement. The new station boasts of a state-of-the-art design that caters to the needs of sustainability and people of determination, yet coherent with the identity and shape of RTA’s stations. The role of the new stations goes beyond the prevailing concept of commuting passengers to encompass the offering of integrated services to passengers such as car parks, bike racks and the integration with the metro and taxi services,” said Mattar Mohammed Al Tayer, Director-General and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of RTA.

Station facilities

Oud Metha Bus Station spans an area of 9,640 square metres. The station is situated in a densely populated area neighbouring Oud Metha Metro Station, schools, community clubs and business centres. The station comprises a ground floor, three identical floors and rooftop parking. Its design is integrated with the public transport means in the area as it has designated spaces for bus stops, taxi stands and private vehicles parking. The average number of riders using the station is expected to reach 10,000 riders per day in the future.

The station has retail outlets and investment areas, designated for Emirati start-ups, in coordination with the Mohammed Bin Rashid Establishment for SME Development. It also has space for self-service kiosks and e-pay, nol card machines, bus information display screens, customers happiness’ index, ATMs, refreshments and snacks vending machines.

Eight bus routes

The station serves eight bus routes; seven of them serve public transport routes and the other one is a Metro link. 40 buses are deployed on these routes,which link key places and areas in the city such as Dubai Mall, Al Qusais, Burjuman, Dubai Museum, International City, Wafi City, Al Seef, Business Bay, Al Nahda, Al Safa and Al Satwa.

Completed stations

RTA opened four public bus stations, namely Al Ghubaiba, Al Jaliyah, Etisalat and the Union Bus Stations. Al Ghubaiba Bus Station is comprised of six buildings and covers an area of 2,452 square metres with a capacity to serve 15,000 passengers per day.

RTA provides AI-powered legislative resources

Meanwhile, RTA has succeeded in developing a prototype model based on utilising artificial intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), using a smart search engine to facilitate the search in RTA’s legislative resources, for employees on Intranet.

The initiative is part of RTA’s approved AI Roadmap (2020-2025), which is in line with the government policies and objectives of the UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence and RTA’s Digitisation Strategy.

The newly developed smart search engine aims to set up a legal knowledge platform for all legislative resources of RTA, which in turn aims to activate the use of AI in the internal systems.

In this regard, several legislations have been transformed into smart digital formats that can be processed using AI and machine learning algorithms, which enables the developed model to understand the legal content and find relevant texts without literally typing the text to be searched for.

This smart digital format aims to facilitate the process of Machine Learning, as this type of digital files is configured to deal with the computer, likewise the conventional files designed to be read by humans. The search engine connects to all legislative documents of RTA, and provides accurate information to RTA’s employees. It constitutes an integrated electronic platform that facilitates the searching for the required documents in a short time frame with accurate deliverables to users.