By Ashwaq Ahmed, Chief Reporter www.gulfnews.com
Dubai: The Public Transport Agency (PTA) has done a major restructuring of its bus routes to simplify the service for its users.
The revamping includes cancelling of some routes, merging of other routes in addition to introducing some new routes.
Additionally, the frequency of some routes has also been increased while the run time of some routes have been improved by re-routing the buses and shortening the trip.
“We request our commuters to update their information about public bus routes as a number of changes will be introduced from July 1,” said Mohammad Abu Bakr Al Hashemi, Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the PTA at the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).
Al Hashemi told a press conference yesterday that major changes have been made in the public transport service to simplify its use and to attract more people to use buses.
Overlapping
“The changes come after a comprehensive study about the bus service in Dubai,” he said, adding that the route system was quite complicated and there were a number of overlapping of bus routes while the run time was also quite long,” he said.
He said that the run time and routes of a number of buses have been reduced while frequency of buses at a number of busy routes has been increased.
New changes
“We did some changes in April and then in June but there will be some major changes from July 1,” he added. Some 35 out of 100 routes will be affected with the new changes.
The PTA has updated the route maps in the bus and the metro stations in addition to updating its website and the online journey planner service. The PTA has also started new route X13 between Al Qusais Bus Station 3 and Satwa Bus Station 2 on public demand.
Al Hashemi said that usage of public transport in Dubai has increased from the earlier six per cent to 10 per cent this year after the introduction of an integrated public transport system which includes the Dubai Metro, buses and water transport.
He added that the PTA expects a big jump in the number of commuters after revamping of the routes.
“We are also working on launching the second and the third phase of dedicated bus lanes in the Central Business Districts (CBD) areas of Dubai in coming months as the introduction of the first phase of special bus and taxi lanes has also helped us improve bus timing,” he said.
Routes 11M, 13X and X25 have been cancelled. Operational hours on route 13B will be extended with a 12 minutes frequency between each service.
There will be change of transit time on feeder bus routes including: F3, F4, F5, F10, F11, F29, F30, F31, F33. Service frequency on F32A, F13 and 21 will be revised.
More details:
Commuters are advised to visit the RTA’s website www.rta.ae or call customer service on 8009090 for updated route information, timing and frequency of public buses.
