H.E. Mattar Al Tayer, Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of the Roads ‘&’ Transport Authority (RTA), announced the opening of 7 stations on the Red Line of Dubai Metro on 30 April 2010 and 3 more on 15 May 2010.
“The Consortium undertaking Dubai Metro Project is set to complete all works on the remaining 18 stations on the Red Line of Dubai Metro project on 25 April 2010 and 7 stations of which will be opened on 30 April 2010; namely: Emirates, Airport Terminal 1, Al Karama, Emirates Towers, Dubai Internet City, Marina and Ibn Battuta stations. 3 others are planned to be opened on 15 May 2010, namely: GGICO, World Trade Centre and Al Qouz stations, and the remaining 8 stations on the Red Line will be opened over the next months of this year” said Al Tayer.
Al Tayer commented on the criteria upon which the new stations have been selected for opening and said:”Stations have been selected based on the extent of population density in the locality served by each station so as to provide convenient services to the inhabitants in the neighbourhood, availability of commercial activities in the area served by each station, availability of government activities in the vicinity of each station, the station integration with other transport modes such as buses ‘&’ water transport means, and the projected number of commuters at each station.” “As RTA is keen on maintaining the safety of Dubai Metro users, systems and installations, and assigning considerable importance to the safety ‘&’ readiness of operating systems of trains and stations as well as phased trial runs, it observed a strict compliance with the highest global safety standards, sought the services of international organizations to assess the safety standards throughout the project phases, introduced cutting-edge rail technology, and provided all means of comfort and luxury to passengers” he said.
Al Tayer added: “RTA has carried out site surveys for the neighbourhood of the Dubai Metro Stations opening shortly and accordingly opened up new bus routes to feed the metro stations. 28 buses are being deployed to link the metro stations with the surrounding areas and the service is set to run at 13-20 minutes headway (intervals)”.
RTA Chairman of the Board and Executive Director commented on the metro ridership and said: “Since it had been launched on 9/9/2009 till the end of March last, the Dubai Metro lifted 13.68 million persons and the daily ridership has reached 80k passengers. These numbers are set to rise with the opening of the ten stations this April and next May, and the total ridership of Dubai Metro is expected to hit 35 million passengers by the end of 2010. The number of the metro users is poised to receive a further boost with the operation of the Green Line in August 2011; which will serve vital areas with commercial ‘&’ government activities and huge population density”.
“The huge investments pumped by the Government of Dubai to uplift the infrastructure of transportation sector has paid dividends and proved effective. The increase in the number of mass transit mode users reflect improvement in the culture of using public transport by all segments of the community and the drive was particularly helped by the metro service. RTA public transport means, including the Dubai Metro, public buses, water transport and taxis, have lifted more than 288.777 million passengers in 2009 and the daily ridership of mass transit modes topped 842k passengers” stated Al Tayer.
“Using mass transportation has a host of benefits that include providing physical ‘&’ psychological comfort to the user, minimizing crashes, economizing on fuel ‘&’ maintenance costs of private vehicles and ridding the public from the hassles of finding parking spaces for their vehicles; which has become a challenge facing modern cities worldwide. Besides that, the use of public transportation effectively reduces environmental pollution resulting from the use of massive numbers of private vehicles; which triggers many ailments including respiratory system illnesses” Al Tayer concluded.
