Dubai Road Transport Eyeing at 25 Percent Driverless Vehicles by 2030

At the recently concluded UITP MENA Congress at Milan, Italy; Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) shared its plans to provide driverless vehicles to 25 percent of total populations for daily commuting by the year 2030. The others plans shared were of adding more buses to the transport network taking total number to 2,000 that would be good enough for two million passengers on daily basis.

RTA’s chairman Mattar Al Tayer shared this plan as Duabi has seen staggering 215 percent hike in public transport usage in last 9 years, that is from 2006 to 2015. Attended by many big players of the industry namely, Volvo Buses, MAN Trucks and Bus, WrightBus, VDL and RAPT Group, other MENA region countries also shared their future plans for improving the transportation. Saudi Arab’s capital Riyadh’s personnels also committed to develop six metro and three Bus Rapid Transport lines.

France’s RAPT group would be helping Saudi Arab Public Transport Company (SAPTCO) to develop and maintain first bus network which will include 100 buses and 3 depots in the capital. On the other hand, Easymile along with technology solution provider Omnix demoed a four-wheel self driving public transport solution named EZ10.

The congestion situation, however, is a problem in the MENA region and the countries are working on finding a way to counter these situation. Eng. Khalid Al Hogail, Chairman of UITP MENA and CEO SAPTCO said in a statement, “The big issue in the MENA region is that we have cheap oil, which has pushed against public transport for decades — but congestion is something we need to deal with whatever the oil price.”