The head of Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority appealed to global public transit bosses on Sunday to “work together to create a cleaner, safer and more sustainable future”.
Mattar Al Tayer, the RTA’s director general and chairman, spoke at the opening of a four-day public transport summit in Barcelona, Spain.
The summit is the first held by the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) since before the Covid-19 pandemic shook up the sector and gave a push in many cities to green-minded urban planning.
Dubai has been chosen as host of the 2026 meeting, it was announced on Sunday.
Industry bosses are using the summit to call for trains, trams and buses to be at the centre of city planning as the world strives to cut back carbon emissions and limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Mr Al Tayer said Dubai and the UAE, which will host the Cop28 climate summit this year, were “committed to promoting sustainable and innovative mobility”.
Public transport and other shared journeys have more trebled as a share of all trips in Dubai since 2006, from 6 per cent to 19.1 per cent, he said.
He told delegates the aim was to reach 25 per cent by 2030 and also have a quarter of trips take place in autonomous vehicles by that date.
It is planned that a driverless taxi service will start in Dubai this year. Another goal is to have a zero-emission fleet of buses by 2050.
Dubai’s urban plan is based on the concept of 20-minute cities where people can travel to most of their daily activities in that amount of time.
Mr Al Tayer told the Barcelona summit that Dubai had a “vision of being the world leader in seamless and sustainable mobility”.
“Public transport is an essential part of our city’s infrastructure, leading the way in promoting sustainable mobility,” he said.
“Let us continue to work together to create a cleaner, safer and sustainable future for ourselves and future generations.”
The RTA was shortlisted for a UITP award for its integration of public transport at Expo 2020. The Cop28 summit begins in November at Expo City Dubai.
Dozens of officials from the UITP travelled for 16 hours by train from Brussels to Barcelona for the summit, to symbolise their argument that public transport reduces the world’s carbon footprint.
The body’s outgoing president, Saudi public transport boss Khalid Alhogail, said the world “needs more public transport, together with walking, cycling and shared mobility”.
Reneé Amilcar, the head of transit services in Ottawa, Canada, was elected as Mr Alhogail’s successor.
The UITP’s secretary general Mohamed Mezghani told the summit that peak use of public transport had seen a shift from weekdays to weekends since the pandemic, which led to a boom in remote working and slumps in fare revenue during lockdown.
But he described public transport as indispensable to tackling climate change and achieving other social and economic goals.
“Many of the problems faced by our cities, our economies, our society, the environment – it is public transport that offers up these new sights, new horizons, new ambitions,” Mr Mezghani said.
“These are the common good objectives that must be acknowledged and embraced by policymakers. It’s public transport that shines on a light on our beautiful cities.”
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- Mastery of audio-visual content creation.
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Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
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The burning issue
The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE.
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Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
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