Al Tayer briefs Azeri's Transport Minister on RTA's projects

The Azeri delegation consisted of H.E. Nasir Talibof Undersecretary of Ministry of Transportation, Al Sayed Jawid Najaf, H.E. Eldar Salimov Ambassador of Azerbaijan in the UAE and a number of officials in the Azeri Ministry.

The meeting was attended from the RTA by Laiyla Tahir Director of the Office of the Chairman, Laiyla Harib Director of Strategy & Corporate Performance Dep't, engineer Nabil Mohammed Salih Director of Roads Dep't and Dr. Aysha Al Busmait Director of Marketing & Corporate Communication Dep't.

At the beginning of the meeting H.E. Mattar Al Tayer welcomed the Azeri minister and the accompanying delegation and gave them a short briefing about RTA, which was established by a Decree passed by the Ruler of Dubai in Nov. 2005.

"RTA was confronted, right from the beginning, with a number of challenges and tasked to explore prompt solutions to ease the traffic congestions, develop a long-term strategic plan and proceed ahead with the existing projects. At the time of preparing its Organization Chart, RTA was keen to utilize the experience & practices of the developed countries in the filed of transportation, namely Germany and Singapore. It was intended for the Organization Chart to meet a number of administrative principles such as cutting short the decision-taking level, easy monitoring of performance and enhancing integration between the functional units. The setup contained four technical agencies; namely Traffic & Roads Agency, Public Transport Agency, Rail Agency & Marine Transport Agency in addition to two sectors; Corporate Support and Strategy & Corporate Governance" Al Tayer stated.

The Chairman & CEO of RTA spoke about the RTA's Strategic Plan; which is based on tackling the growing traffic flow. He stated that the Strategic Plan is based on Dubai Strategic Plan declared by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai in February 2007. The plan focused on five key points that include achieving integration between all elements, increasing the productive capacity of roads network through widening the existing network & building new ones and boosting the role of collective transport means for addressing the transportation requirements through provision of high quality modes that serve the requirements of all community segments, he said.

He further added that the plan envisages developing Metro and Tram systems in accordance with the best international standards, developing the collective transport systems of buses and marine transport and expanding the use of the modern technology that is capable of achieving the optimum utilization of road networks and transport systems such as the Dynamic Navigation System (Dalili) and the Intelligent Traffic Systems. It also includes introducing various transport and planning policies which are capable of bringing about a positive change in the attitudes of road networks & transport system users and adopting a comprehensive program to heighten the traffic awareness & education based on developing methodologies & methods to reach out to all sectors of the community.

The H.E. Al Tayer reviewed the key projects that will be carried out by RTA in its strategic plan up to 2020, which include constructing a new road network extending to about 500km, with 96 interchanges and 9 ring roads, with an estimated cost in the region of AED44b. This is in addition to the AED 15b Dubai Metro project and developing the collective transport system with a cost exceeding one billion dirhams including buying of 700 buses including double-deck and articulated buses. He also cited developing the collective marine transport at a cost over one billion dirhams and that includes developing abras transportation and introducing water bus and water taxi systems.

H.E. Dhiaa Mohammed, Minister of Transport in the Republic of Azerbaijan hailed the outstanding development bonanza witnessed by the emirate of Dubai in various fields. "Dubai has made giant strides in growth and development and become an example to be followed. No wonder, it turned out to be destination to a large number of officials who are keen to make use of its experience in implementing massive projects and applying sophisticated technology in all fields", he added.