School buses accounted for 13% of the total volume of traffic during the morning rush hour in Dubai. Statistics showed that the number of students in public and private schools in Dubai in 2016 was about 295,000.
“The school transport centre witnessed a rapid growth where school transport trips exceeded 81,000 per hour and is set to reach 115,000 trips per hour by 2020, and 176,000 trips per hour by 2030,” said HE Mattar Al Tayer, Director-General and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of the Roads & Transport Authority (RTA)
“The number of school buses registered in the traffic system has reached 6,500 so far and is expected to rise to 7,628 buses by 2020 and 14,455 by 2030,” added Al Tayer.
The low percentage of school bus users, 11% share of total schools trips, compared to 32% in the United States means that 88% of students in Dubai use private vehicles to travel to their schools, which increases congestion and environmental pollution. This is aggravated by the low occupancy rate of school buses which is only 53%. The transit means use is still limited and stands at just 1% of the total number of mass transit users,” elaborated Al Tayer.
“The RTA has upgraded the technical specifications of school buses and defined the responsibilities of operators, schools and parents in order to improve the safety and security. Through the comprehensive study for managing the demand on transport, the RTA is currently studying introducing flexi working hours and staggering the working hours and school hours. The RTA also intends to conduct a comprehensive study on the school transport sector to come up with solutions and guidelines related to the distribution of schools and their integration with the roads and transport network, besides surveying school areas and figuring out traffic solutions. The civic body is also poised to enact legislations and incentive programs to streamline the school transport sector and encourage students to use school buses and mass transit means. It also intends to review the technical specifications of school buses to raise the efficiency and safety levels, and study the current working models of the school transport to bring them in line with the global standards. Such endeavours would contribute to raising the school transport efficiency, and significantly reducing the number of the required school buses in order to ease traffic snarls leading to schools and surrounding areas.”