Maktoum honours Transport Award winners

Under the the auspices of Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council,  Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, has honoured the winners of the 5th edition of the Dubai Award for Sustainable Transport 2012 initiated by the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).

On arrival at the venue of the ceremony in the Dubai World Trade Centre, Sheikh Maktoum was received by Mattar Al Tayer, Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of the RTA, along with a host of directors and department heads in both the public and private sectors.

Sheikh Maktoum, together with the audience watched a film on Dubai Award for Sustainable Transport, highlighting the efforts of the Emirate of Dubai in preserving environment and natural resources and enforcing the principles of sustainable development.

Next, Park Won-soon, Mayor of Seoul City, delivered a keynote speech where he reviewed the efforts made by the government of South Korea to achieve sustainable development and promote green growth in Asia, given that the metro system in the Korean capital has been ranked among the top nine metro systems worldwide.

"The transport system is closely associated with people's daily lives, and thus it affects their quality of life and happiness. There are research results showing that the longer the commuting time, the worse the happiness level," said the Mayor of Seoul.

He pointed out that "the people of Seoul led the national craze of driving one's own car until 1980s, and the number of cars in Seoul sharply increased, and in the 1990s, Seoul began to construct roads, and expand public transportation infrastructure.

“To control the traffic, Seoul also began to collect traffic congestion fees and carry out various traffic control measures. Despite decades of carrying out various traffic management measures, Seoul was still not free from traffic congestions. Seoul suffered an estimated loss of $6.4 billion s every year due to traffic congestion."

Sheikh Maktoum then honoured the winners of the Award. Masdar City finished first in the Mobility Management category for its sustainable transport project in the city, which is a fundamental element of its design. Its PRT (Personal Rapid Transport) pod cars are carbon-free, driverless, and automated.

Apparel Group finished second for the Shared Transportation Project, which aims to reduce carbon footprints, avoid traffic congestions, improve road safety along with employee punctuality at work place and increased efficiency of all the staff. The group provides buses to commute around 2000 employees per day.

The Dubai Airport Free Zone finished third for running an initiative for providing transportation services to the metro stations. Buses have been deployed to offer shuttle services for about 13,000 employees in 1,600 companies from the Airport Free Zone Metro Station to and from their work places in DAFZ.

In the Transport Safety category, School Transport Services LLC was the winner for its project of: Best Technical & Operational Practices of Total Safety, Training, Awareness and Learning. STS is currently serving 40 educational institutions and 26 non-educational sector business units, and commuting more than 55,000 passengers in 2,000 trips through more than 1,500 routes in 110 areas and covering more than 135,000km every day.

Al Otaiba General Transport Group was the runner-up for its initiative pertinent to the obtaining of the OHSAS certificate and installing the GPS (vehicle tracking system) in vehicles.

In the third place was Rawdhat Al Amal (Hope Nursery) for its initiative ‘My Bus My Saftey’ which contributed to raising the awareness of children, parents, bus conductors and the local community about compliance with the rules of boarding buses to ensure safe travel of children from and to their homes.

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