By Dhanusha Gokulan www.khaleejtimes.com
Dubai – Joining her colleagues at the Etisalat metro station, Aisha, a government employee, excitedly hopped on a metro going towards the Union Station. “Car Free day is always an exciting time.
I don’t use the metro often, but I think I should. It is convenient and I am saving on fuel,” said Aisha.
The young accountant and her colleagues had parked their cars in the multi-storey parking lots across Dubai’s several metro stations and bus depots in the early hours of Wednesday and were found eagerly waiting at metro stations and bus depots.
Employees of 303 government and private organisations took to using public transport on the sixth edition of ‘Car Free Day’ on February 4.
As compared to last year, where less than 70 organisations partook in car free day, Dubai Municipality officials said that they were very impressed with the participation from employees of the whooping 303 government and private entities.
“We are very happy with the turnout this year and we want more people to adopt using public transport regularly. Dubai has a high quality mass transportation system and we want people to us the infrastructure regularly,” said Hussain Nasser Lootah, Director General of Dubai Municipality.
The organisation had expected a participation of 15,000 cars, but from numbers gathered from the turnout at the event, officials are expecting the final number to go above estimates.
The final figures of carbon monoxide emissions, and cars off the road will be released soon, according to Municipality officials. In 2014, twenty tonnes of carbon emissions were reduced on the day of the event. More info
