By Preeti Kannan www.thenational.ae
DUBAI // Thousands of residents are downloading the Roads and Transport Authority’s new mobile applications to get taxis, top up Salik, pay for parking, renew their licences and get live maps and instant traffic updates while driving around the city.
Smart Salik, one of the five apps launched in September, is by far the most popular with nearly 155,000 downloads, followed by the Wojhati, a journey planner app launched last year, with 148,638 downloads. Meanwhile, the two-month-old Smart Taxi app has already had 90,000 downloads.
“The Salik app and the Wojhati apps have done tremendously well,” said Abdulla Al Madani, chief executive of the corporate technical support services sector at RTA.
Wojhati helps people to plan their journeys on buses, taxis, the metro and the water bus. Once people feed in their location and their destination, the app gives the transport options, the journey time and its total cost. An update will be released soon to include the new Dubai Tram project.
“We have also added augmented reality to the app. If you don’t know where the bus stop is or in which direction, you have to use your phone’s camera to scan the location and the app will show you where the bus stop is,” said Mr Al Madani.
He said Smart Drive, which was launched only two weeks ago, had already been downloaded 31,000 times. More info
