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Dubai Taxi Meters will Now Tick for Every Waiting Minute

DUBAI — Drilling an even bigger hole in the pockets of people travelling in the emirate’s cabs, the Public Transport Agency (PTA) at the RTA has spiked the first 10-minute waiting time of the meter, senior PTA officials said
on Wednesday.

Earlier, 10 minutes used to be a grace period after which only the taxi meter started adding 50 fils per minute as waiting charge.

Now, once the taxi gets stuck in a traffic jam, the waiting charge will start immediately with the meter adding 50 fils per minute.

Last week, the cabs in the emirate started charging a minimum fare of Dh10 in addition to a raise in the flag-fall rate (meter fare) to Dh20 for travelling to Sharjah and the northern emirates.

Issa Al Dossari, the CEO of the PTA maintained that the aim of introducing these measures was to encourage drivers to lift passengers from different destinations, congested or not, and minimise the cases of passenger refusals. On the Dh20 fare to Sharjah, Dossari said, “The meter will as usual start to work with Dh3 and the driver will be adding the amount of Dh20 in any area after entering Sharjah or at the end of the trip manually by pressing a button on the car meter. The amount of Dh20 will not be added electronically.”

As for the minimum fare of Dh10, Al Dossari said that the taxi drivers used to carry passengers to a number of short distances within Dubai via trips costing less than Dh10 that forced the drivers to refuse to pick up passengers to short distance destinations.

“To put an end to this phenomenon and encourage the drivers to carry passengers whatever the distance is, the meter will electronically round the amount to be Dh10 per trip,” the
official said.

He said that the taxi meters of all the cabs were being adjusted accordingly.

An official at PTA said that the Marketing and Corporate Communications department will start a campaign aimed at enlightening the people about these new rules.

The campaign will include distribution of brochures to the people as well as the taxi drivers.

The driver will be required to show a passenger the set of new rules to avoid any confusion.

joy@khaleejtimes.com