By Mustafa Al Zarooni www.khaleejtimes.com
Despite huge spikes in the growth of passengers on Dubai’s public transport network, the Roads and Transport Authority boss says passenger use on the Metro network is at less than 30 per cent of the total capacity.
The emirate of Dubai has seen rapid growth in its infrastructure in different fields, but perhaps the most outstanding is the development of public transport and road networks.
RTA executive director Mattar Al Tayer has presided over the changes. He said all transport projects when built took into consideration growth for over more than the next 50 years.
The past five years have witnessed the completion of several projects such as public bus service, marine transport and water taxis.
A total of one million passengers are transported through the RTA’s public transport, of which 350,000 use the Dubai Metro every day, while the remainder are transported on other services. Metro can handle 1,200,000 passengers a day.
The giant road projects can accommodate as many as 1,120,000 Dubai-registered vehicles, while 21,500 motor bikes have their traffic files registered in Dubai — in addition to the cars that come onto the network from outside the emirate.
The Metro’s Red Line saw a 16 per cent rise in the number of users last year until November 2012 as compared to the corresponding period of the previous year, bringing passenger numbers to 6.5 million.
Likewise, users of the Metro Green Line over the same period rose to 3.5 million passengers, constituting a rise of 37 per cent. Users of feeder buses, classified as part of the Dubai Metro, went up to 21 per cent during the equivalent period. More info
