Around 56 million passengers used the public bus in Dubai in the first 6 months of this year, almost equal to the number of passengers in the same period last year.
The latest figures released by the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) showed that some 119 million passengers were expected to use public buses in Dubai by the end of this year.
However, the RTA said the Dubai public bus service had improved in terms of punctuality. Around 62% of buses were on time so far this year, up from 17% in 2008.
Mattar Al Tayer, Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of RTA, said the authority’s strategy had succeeded in improving the performance of the public bus service in Dubai, increasing efficiency, and reducing fuel consumption and maintenance costs.
Public transport routes throughout Dubai have been restructured in 2010 with a view to reducing the number of km travelled, realising operational efficiency, redistributing the frequency of the service in urban routes and Metro feeder service.
This strategy had helped lower the number of km driven from 8.88 million in January to 6.60 million in June, a drop of 25.7%. The number of bus journeys had dropped from 347,172 in January to 246,393 in June, down by 29%.
The restructuring of routes has definitely helped in reducing operational costs and improved efficiency at the same time.
The statistics showed that of the 56 million passengers carried in 1.8 million journeys in the first half of this year, 44 million passengers used Dubai intra-city bus routes, about 7 million passengers used Dubai inter-city routes, and 4.8 million passengers used the Dubai Metro feeder buses.
The RTA announced that it would open bus depots at Al Khawaneej and Jebel Ali this month. Al Khawaneej depot has a parking yard for 284 buses, comprising 146 standard buses and 138 articulated buses. The site would also include an electromechanical workshop capable of accommodating 20 buses and an administrative building for about 40 employees. Jebel Ali bus depot can accommodate about 300 buses. The depot has office buildings for 50 employees and residential units for about 1,200 bus drivers.