Tag: Ramadan Abdullah

The Dubai Metro will increase the number of trains during peak hours to cope with the increasing rush of passengers. In an exclusive interview with Gulf News, Abdullah said they already put more trains into service during peak hours if they become too crowded.

More than 2500 employees and officials of Dubai Municipality, Dubai Land Department, Dubai Chamber of Commerce and etisalat office in Dubai ditched their cars today. Director General of DM Hussain Nasser Lootah led the initiative by travelling on the Metro from Rashidiya Station to Union Station adjacent to the Municipality headquarters.

Inspectors — issuing fines and penalising commuters for carrying food parcels on the Dubai Metro — have gone overboard, commuters said. In a recent incident, a passenger's food package was confiscated onboard the Metro, following which he was asked to disembark at the next station to pay the fine.

The target to have 30 per cent of Dubai population using public transport by 2020 is on course, largely because of the results shown by the Metro ridership. “Our strategy is to have 30 per cent of the population hitting public transport of which the Metro set to take a lion’s share of 17 per cent with the rest taking a 13 per cent share,” contended the chairman of the Board and Executive Director of Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), Mattar Al Tayer.

The Dubai Metro is aiming to reach a daily passenger load of 170,000 per day, according to a top RTA Rail official. The Director of Rail Operation, RTA Rail Agency Ramadan Abdullah, said: “Daily users of the metro currently stand at 140,000 passengers per day, i.e. in excess of 4,020,000 passengers per month.

Dubai Metro is becoming a favourite commuting option every passing day with more than a million commuters using the service during the Eid holidays. "We are very pleased with the response from the commuters as [the] number of passengers using the Metro has constantly been increasing," said Ramadan Abdullah, Director of Rail Operations at the Rail Agency of the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA). He said the extended hours also attract more commuters.

It's 7.30am at Rashidiya Station and a few stray passengers board the Metro, find a comfy seat, plug in their earphones and hope to doze for the next hour or so, oblivious to the chaos that is about to come. Five stations into the journey, at the Deira City Centre, the passengers board in the hundreds. By the time the train reaches Khalid Bin Al Waleed station, people are standing shoulder to shoulder, or "mouth to mouth", as one man puts it.

Dubai Metro commuters are allowed to end their fast on the platforms during Ramadan, said a top RTA (Dubai Roads and Transport Authority) official. "It is still not allowed to eat and drink inside the trains but passengers can now do so on the platforms and all other areas of the Metro station," Ramadan Abdullah, Director of Rail Operations at the RTA told Gulf News on Tuesday.

The system used to operate Metro trains is called Seltrac, an automatic train operation system. Seltrac can run without human help and the Metro official stressed that the system works better if no one interferes with its operations.

According to Ramadan Abdullah, director of rail operations at the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), such acts pose a danger to other travellers as well as to property.