NEWS FROM THE UAE
SOURCE : THE NATIONAL
Dubai Metro banks on low fares for success
DUBAI - JUNE 23: Passengers on the Dubai Metro will be able to glide from one end of the city to the other for as little as Dh5.80 (US$1.60), officials said yesterday.
That would make the public transit system one of the most affordable to ride in the world, according to the Roads and Transport Authority, comparable to those of Cairo and Singapore, and several times cheaper than Hong Kong, Tokyo and New York City.
“The price will make it attractive to use buses and the Metro, and it is also a very luxurious and comfortable way to travel,” said Mattar Mohammed al Tayer, the authority’s executive director and chairman of the board.
A single journey of less than three kilometres will cost Dh2 if paid for with a paper ticket, or Dh1.80 if the passenger uses a prepaid card. A journey within any one of five zones in the city will cost Dh2.50 for a ticket, or Dh2.30 on a card. Travelling through two zones will cost Dh4.50 for a ticket and Dh4.10 on a card; a trip from one end of Dubai to the other, or any journey crossing three or more zones, will cost Dh6.50 with a ticket and Dh5.80 using a card.
Registered students and senior citizens will pay 90 fils for a journey of less than three kilometres, and a maximum of Dh2.90 for the longest trips.
Passengers in “gold class” carriages will pay Dh4 for a short journey with a paper ticket, and Dh3.60 with a card; longer journeys will cost Dh13 and Dh11.60 respectively.
Bus fares will depend on the length of the journey, rather than the current flat fare of Dh2. Travellers will be able to change from the Metro to a bus or water taxi without paying another fare.
The RTA will also provide three multi-storey car parks at Jebel Ali, Al Qusais and Rashidiya, which public transport passengers will be able to use for free. Other motorists will have to pay.
Mr al Tayer said that fares would remain fixed “for some time”, and that the Metro would operate at a loss, subsidised by the Dubai Government.
“I can assure you, the ticket prices will not even cover our maintenance and operating costs.
“All over the world, you never make a profit from public transport – if you can recover 45 to 50 per cent of your capital investment you are doing OK.
“Maybe in some years time it will break even, but making a profit is a different story.
“The Dubai Government will finance RTA operations – we are of course looking for private partners to invest in future projects, but we will not be looking at increasing the fees.”
The prepaid travel cards, called “Nol” (“fare”), will go on sale when the Metro opens, he said. There will be three different types: silver, which can be used immediately for most journeys, gold, which will allow users to travel in the Gold Class carriages, and blue, which will be personalised with a photo of the user and can be used for discount fares.
Ramadan Abdulla Mohammed, director of the unified card department at the RTA, said that in cities such as Hong Kong, 90 to 95 per cent of people using public transport used an electronic card.
He said the Metro prices were intended to persuade people in Dubai to follow suit.
He said the RTA wanted 30 per cent of Dubai’s population using public transport. Planners hoped for the system to be used for about 600,000 trips each day.
Parking fee date now Oct 1, officials say
A parked car blocks in another vehicle on Hamdan Street yesterday. Jaime Puebla / The National
ABU DHABI - JUNE 23: Abu Dhabi residents bracing themselves for parking fees in parts of the city as early as next month have had a reprieve.
The Department of Transport issued a press release on Sunday that new regulations, fees and fines were to be introduced from July.
But the official in charge of the parking management programme said yesterday the new regulations, fees and fines would not start until October 1.
Najib al Zarooni, the director of parking at the Department of Transport, said he believed that a mistake had been made by the department’s public relations team regarding the July date.
It would be “impossible” to start enforcing paid parking that soon, he said.
Mr al Zarooni declined to offer specifics beyond Sunday’s press release, saying the details of initiatives and timelines would be outlined at a press conference expected next month.
“We will not be having enforcement in July,” he said. “Actual implementation, we will mention it in the press conference.”
The press release said the parking management programme would introduce new legislation and guidelines to regulate the use of both public and private parking spaces with the aim of encouraging drivers to stay only for a short time in busy city centre parking spots.
Residential parking permits will be issued and parking facilities built either above or underground. Existing underground parking will be improved.
The department took over responsibility for the programme last year from Abu Dhabi Municipality, which had installed solar-powered parking meters between Hamdan Street and Capital Park in anticipation of starting the programme.
Mr al Zarooni said the department was studying the municipality’s plan to see what changes were needed.
“The study was made two years back,” he said. “It is an old study, so we need to study everything again.
“There are so many projects coming out so we have to take that into consideration also.”
The British company NCP Services, now called NSL Services Group, was hired last year to set up and manage the parking programme for the city centre and part of Airport Road.
At a presentation last November, the company said the programme would be introduced in 10 stages over two-and-a-half years, and would include a total of 2,500 meters. People will be able to pay to park at the meters via mobile phone, credit card or with a prepaid smart card. The cost has not been disclosed.
Paid parking will eventually apply from the Corniche to Hazza bin Zayed Street between Khaleej al Arabi Road and the road that runs in front of Abu Dhabi Mall, as well as the strip from Hazza bin Zayed to Al Saada Street between Al Karamah Street and Fourth Street, according to the company’s plan.
In the long term, the DoT is looking for city centre sites for public car parks, either above or below ground. Temporary car parks may be erected initially.
Davyd Farrell, who is organising a symposium on parking issues to be held in Abu Dhabi this November, said the management programme was necessary to help reduce congestion in the city centre. “Of course there will be some resistance from the general public to start with because they are not used to paying for a parking space,” Mr Farrell said.
“But ultimately I am sure the majority of people will realise that this is a good thing and it is going to make downtown Abu Dhabi a much more pleasant place.
“It is going to make finding parking a lot easier.”
A lack of places to park only “adds to the traffic on the roads”, Mr Farrell said.
“If you’ve got 15, 20 cars already going around, they are just adding to an already busy area.By implementing this city-wide project, the actual standard of living of people’s daily routines will improve.”
World Bank expects recession to deepen
UAE - June 23: The recession will be deeper than expected, but Gulf economies will fare better than the global average, the World Bank said yesterday.
The expected contraction in global economic output will threaten the fragile economies of developing countries and increase the numbers of the world’s poor and unemployed, the bank said in its Global Development Finance report.
“Prospects for recovery in the developing countries in the Middle East and North Africa will depend importantly on the strength of the eventual revival of growth in Europe and in the GCC countries,” the bank said.
The global economy will contract 2.9 per cent, it predicted. It had previously forecast a contraction of 1.7 per cent, but increased this after taking into consideration signs that the international repercussions from the global financial crisis continued to grow.
The projections pushed the price of oil lower for a second day while US stock futures also fell.
The World Bank’s global growth estimate is more pessimistic than the most recent forecast from the International Monetary Fund, which predicted a contraction of 1.3 per cent this year and forecast the UAE’s economy would shrink by 0.6 per cent.
While the World Bank did not publish a forecast for the UAE, local economists predict the country’s economy will contract by 0.8 per cent this year, according to a survey conducted by The National.
Justin Lin, the chief economist of the World Bank, said: “The crisis of the past two years is having dramatic effects on capital flows to developing countries, and the world appears to be entering an era of lower growth.”
The bank called for increased international co-ordination on efforts to combat the effects of the crisis, saying the newly integrated nature of the world economy would diffuse local attempts to stimulate growth and potentially threaten the finances of individual states.
“Any country that acts alone, even the United States, may reasonably fear that increases in government debt will cause investors to lose confidence in its fiscal sustainability and so withdraw financing,” the report said.
Since the onset of the financial crisis, most GCC economies have pledged to increase government spending this year, even though this could result in a budget deficit for some of them.
However, analysts say countries in the region are unlikely to face the same scale of problems as the West.
Philippe Dauba-Pantanacce, an economist at Standard Chartered Bank in Dubai, said repaying a deficit “should not be seen as a problem in this region. Substantially lower oil prices can only be a temporary phenomenon, and the guarantee of comfortable future revenues significantly exceeds the outlook period.”
During the past six months the oil price has risen from lows of about US$42 a barrel to above $70, a change which some analysts have said signals an approaching rebound in the global economy.
The World Bank also increased its estimates for how far economies would shrink in developed countries, lowering Japan’s outlook from a previous estimate of minus 5.3 per cent to minus 6.8 per cent this year, and the Euro zone from minus 2.7 per cent to minus 4.5 per cent. World trade volume will also shrink by 9.7 per cent this year, the bank said.
Adding to the negative news from the World Bank, the head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) agreed that developing countries would continue to face problems this year.
“We see a very difficult 2009, with negative growth in the OECD area. Unemployment problems are going to continue to linger,” Angel Gurria, the secretary general of the OECD, told Reuters yesterday.
Death of Two Children - Foreign labs to run more tests
DUBAI - JUNE 23: Authorities have turned to specialised laboratories outside the country to pinpoint what killed two children thought to have succumbed to severe food poisoning last week, it was announced yesterday.
The Dubai Public Prosecution has sent samples of food and tissue to laboratories outside the UAE, although it did not specify where. Prosecutors also ordered autopsies on the two bodies yesterday.
“Due to the lack of the medical reason of death, the advocate general has ordered an autopsy of the two deceased children by the medical examiner to find the reason of death,” prosecutors said in a written statement.
Dubai Advocate General Khalifa Rashid bin Deemas confirmed yesterday that prosecutors were investigating the deaths, and that he had authorised the medical examiner to use all means available to determine what caused the deaths.
Chalsea & Nathan
Nathan D’Souza, five, died on June 13 after suffering from vomiting and other symptoms common to food poisoning. His sister Chelsea, eight, died the following day.
The autopsy order comes after nearly a week of investigation and laboratory tests by Dubai Municipality and hospitals.
The reports were handed over to the police last week, who referred the case to the prosecution for further investigation. Although authorities have been quiet about the test results, it has been learnt that so far the exact cause of death could not be identified. Better technology would be needed to trace toxins that may have killed the children.
Their father, Patrick, met prosecutors yesterday and said he was confident the case would move quickly.
“I was at the public prosecution and they told me that the investigation has not yet been completed. They said that the samples have been sent abroad for further analysis,” Mr D’Souza said.
“The prosecution assured us that the case is being taken very seriously and I feel quite confident,” he added.
The Dubai Public Prosecution reviewed statements from the restaurant staff and the children’s mother, but it is not clear whether officials have questioned anyone else.
In his statement, Mr bin Deemas said: “Given the mysterious circumstances of the incident and the concern of public opinion in this case, Dubai Public Prosecution will cover all the aspects of the circumstances that led to the death of the children and take the legally required action in the light of what is clear from these investigations.”
Nathan, Chelsea, their mother Ann Sofia and a housemaid became ill on June 12 after eating a meal delivered from a restaurant serving Chinese food in Al Qusais. The Lotus Garden Restaurant yesterday said there had been no complaints from others who ate at the restaurant or ordered food from it.
Mr D’Souza said: “We have to wait until the report is released to say anything on this. A series of tests will be conducted and only then would we know.” He stressed that he did not want media speculation to lead to “drama” surrounding his children’s deaths.
“All this speculation is not correct and is not doing any good for us,” he said. “New stories are being created by the media each day. We are talking about the future of children and family in Dubai.”
Mr D’Souza and his wife, a French national, have been living in Dubai for several years and have been supported in their mourning by family and friends. “We need to concentrate on children, on health care and other serious issues that families face here,” Mr D’Souza said.