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29 March 2024

Your Dubai cab is only a shake away

It is now possible to call for a taxi in Dubai with a simple shake of your smartphone.

Published

It is now possible to call for a taxi in Dubai with a simple shake of your smartphone. Really!

No call on hold, no location description and no more wondering where the booked taxi may have reached by now. You basically communicate directly with the cabbie, explained officials of the Roads and Transportation Authority (RTA) at the launch of the smartphone application on Tuesday.

The service runs under the app titled ‘RTA Smart Taxi’ and is already available on Google Play Store. iPhone users should be able to get the app next week.

“Whereas you used to shake your hand to flag a cab, you will now shake your smartphone,” said Abdullah Ali Al Madani, Chairperson of the Smart City Committee and CEO of the Corporate Technical Support Services Sector at the RTA. Does this mean that anybody waving his smartphone will get a cab? It is not that simple.

Before using the application, the phone number of the customer should be entered. This will enable the technology to pinpoint the nearest cabbie to the exact location of the person shaking the phone.

“Once the cabdriver confirms the order, the user is directly informed about the location of the taxicab, and will also be intimated when the cab arrives at the location selected by the user,” said Adel Shakri, Director of Transportation Systems at the RTA.

Practically, the customer will not need to use his smartphone after that. However, the application can be used to retrieve detailed information about the trip. For example, the movement of the cabbie can be followed on the real-time screen, the name of the taxi driver will be revealed as well as the estimated time to reach the destination.

Currently, the taxi fleet in Dubai maintains an average time to destination of 13.8 minutes, the team said. Although this travel time depends on many factors, such as taxi availability, traffic, and location, the process of ordering a cab will be reduced in time with the use of the app, pointed out Al Madani.

“Normally, a customer would call the despatch centre, may be put on hold and describe the location. With this procedure now being a shake of the phone, ordering a taxi will be done much faster,” he said.

The demand for taxis in the emirate is continuously on the rise, and the fleet managed by the RTA has been expanded by almost four per cent every year, said Youssef Mohammad Al Ali, CEO of the Public Transport Agency at the RTA.

“There is a huge demand for this service. We are launching this application because we believe it will truly benefit the taxi service in many ways,” added Ahmed Hashim Bahrozyan, who heads the team supervising the implementation of the integrated roadmap for transition into a Smart Government and CEO of the Licensing Agency.

The taxi fleet adds up to 8,997 taxis operated by 20,000 drivers, all of which are now linked to the new technology. This includes the 495 cabs of the Hala Taxi fleet, he pointed out.

After using the application, the customer will be able to rate the taxi driver, or save the history of the trip. In case something is lost or forgotten in the taxi, the taxi can easily be traced and the thing recovered.

The charges for a taxi booked through the application are the same as the regular charges for a booking made through the Booking and Dispatch Centre; the starting fee is Dh6 during the day and Dh7 at night.

Advanced bookings can be made with the application at any time and date, contrary to the regular booking in advance that can only be made outside peak hours, which are between 7-10 in the morning and between 5-8 in the evening.