Dubai: As many as 827,272 people used public transport on November 1, Dubai’s Free Transport Day, Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) announced on Sunday.
RTA’s annual initiative to promote greater use of public transport, saw an overwhelming number of people using RTA’s facilities, 27 per cent more than an average weekend and well beyond its target of around 800,000 people.
“We received outstanding feedback and we are very pleased by the response. The ridership was much more than our target,” said Hussain Al Banna.
The response has been improving each passing year with 515,828 commuters in 2010 and 693,221 people last year.
Breaking down the ridership numbers on the day, 506,920 people used metro, 314,023 people used the buses, while 2,329 people sailed on the waterbuses.
November 1 also saw RTA hosting several events as part of the Public Transport Day activities, with the blood donation drive at Al Ghubaibah station witnessing huge queues of donors.
“Around 200 people signed up for the blood donation drive, the most successful event of the day, but for some reasons we could only take blood from 89 people, which is also a huge number,” he added.
As many as 19 government departments used metro on the day to travel to and from work, while a number of VIPs and government officials also signed up with the blood donation and health check camps. More info
