Mattar Al Tayer, Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of the Roads and Transport Authority, RTA, has said that the spiralling use of smart and electronic systems in the public transport and taxi sectors at the authority has stepped up the integration of mass transit systems in Dubai.
Speaking about the positives of the systems, Al Tayer said, "It contributed to increasing the efficiency and generating savings in excess of Dh200 million, increased bus compliance with timetables, and brought added happiness to customers. In 2014, bus compliance with on-time exiting of depots was as high as 99%, Dubai taxicabs covered about two billion kilometres, and the average time of dispatching a taxicab to customers was 13 minutes and 43 seconds.
The Automated Vehicle Movement, AVM, designed at the highest global practices to provide bus monitoring and tracking in an area of about 83 million square meters, contributed to enhancing communication between the control centre and bus drivers, monitoring the movement of 1,568 buses over 252 routes, increased the control of revenues, and reducing expenditure by more than Dh200 million.
It has also raised customers' satisfaction rating from 68% in 2009 to 85% in 2014, and reduced customers complaints from 500 complaints in 2009 to 8 complaints in 2014. The system assisted in producing more than 46 reports of performance indicators, and carrying out periodic maintenance to buses. The system is linked to seven smart technologies and apps such as the fare system (NOL), screens displaying real-time information about bus movement, journey planner (Wojhati) app, scheduling system, and the cost accounting system among others.
"In 2014, the number of public bus passengers topped 135.5 million, compared with 115.67 million in 2014, and the daily ridership of buses reached 371,000 compared with 321,000 in 2013. Bus routes service accounted for the lion's share of total bus ridership, accounting for 91.888 million riders, followed by metro stations' feeder bus service accounting for 24.432 million riders, inter-city bus services which had12.89 million riders, and the bus corporate rental service, which served about 5.8 million riders," explained Al Tayer.
Source: WAM