Transportation in Dubai

The Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) was formed by the decree number 17 for the year 2005.

RTA is responsible for planning and providing the requirements of transport, roads & traffic in the Emirate of Dubai, and between Dubai and other Emirates of the UAE, neighboring countries in order to provide an effective & an integrated transport system.

Because of the growing population, commuters in Dubai experience a high amount of traffic congestion. The city has become the most congested city in the Middle East. Professionals working in Dubai spend an average of 1 hour and 45 minutes commuting to and from work. The government has invested heavily in the Dubai's road infrastructure, although this has not kept pace with the increase in the number of vehicles. This, coupled with the induced traffic phenomenon, has led to growing problems of congestion. However, as of May 2009, with thousands of expatriate workers having lost their jobs and left back to their countries following the economic crisis, traffic congestion has eased significant

Traffic congestion, the single biggest concern among Dubai's 1.44 million residents, inflicts losses of Dh4.6 billion or 3.15% of the emirate's Dh146 billion GDP a year. The city has a car ownership rate of 541 cars per 1,000 population. This figure exceeds that of cities like New York City [444 cars per 1,000 population], London [345 cars per 1,000 population] and Singapore [111 cars per 1,000 population]. If this trend continues, then by 2020, there will be 5.3 million registered cars in Dubai.

According to some traffic experts, Dubai is suffering from an originally flawed road system, with in-built bottlenecks on certain key routes such as the Dubai-Sharjah road. Over time, however, the new infrastructure including the Dubai Metro, the new bridges and complex of flyovers is expected to ease congestion to some extent.

A further 500 km of roads plus 120 multi-level interchanges will also be built before 2020 at a cost of around 44 billion dirhams ($12 billion) as transport chiefs in the emirate aim to improve life for motorists.

Dubai also has an extensive taxi system, by far the most frequently used means of public transport within the Emirate. There are both government-operated and private cab companies. The Dubai Transport Corporations operates cream-coloured taxis, with different color tops representing different franchsing companies operating under RTA regulations.. Some of the private cab companies are Cars Taxi, National Taxi, Cititaxi and Metro Taxi. The meter generally begins as Dhs. 12.00 when a requesting a cab from the call center, and 5.00 Dhs. when taking a taxi on the road and is generally charged by distance at 1.5 Dhs./km. The minimum fare charge though is 12.00 AED. There are approximately 9497 taxis as per October 2015 located in the city.

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Wikipedia