In November this year, the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) announced that it will be shutting down the call centre facility to book an RTA taxi, and will move to the new digital platform Hala on Careem App.
However, the decision to close down the call centre service has been extended to 15 January 2020 aiming to give more time to passengers to adjust to the new system. It means you can still make an RTA taxi booking by calling on 04 208 0808.
Ahmed Bahrozyan, CEO of Public Transport Agency, RTA said that the introduction of Hala e-hailing booking serving was introduced as part of RTA’s objective to support Dubai in becoming the smart city as well as offering customers a smarter way to get around town. About two million bookings have been made through the Hala since its launch on 29 August.
On another note, Ahmed Bahrozyan also brought another insight to notice that the elderly section of the society still have limited access to smart services and will encounter challenges to use the app. Therefore, the RTA team is working on a new landline to meet the needs of this category. Details of the fixed line will be communicated to the targeted segment in due course.
Meanwhile, Hala users can save their time by booking the taxi through the app, that has brought down the booking confirmation time to 10 seconds from 2-3 minutes in comparison to the traditional system. The average time to get in a taxi has also come down to 3 and a half minutes from 11 minutes under the previous system.