Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) announced that it has completed the construction of 20 air-conditioned rest sheds for delivery riders, which are distributed in the most important regions of the emirate and aims to construct 40.
This is one among RTA’s strategies of easing road safety, promoting welfare of delivery riders, and minimizing the dangers linked with road accidents.
While delivering his speech, Mattar Al Tayer, Director-General and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of RTA pointed out that the authority strive for establishment of safer and comfortable working conditions for delivery riders.
The scheme has the goal of improving the traffic safety for all classes of road users and is in line with the Dubai Traffic Safety Strategy, with its call for ‘Zero Fatalities’ in an effort to establish Dubai as a world destination for traffic safety, as stated by Al Tayer.
These rest area constructions can be attributed to the growth in delivery sector in Dubai due to increased demand for the delivery services. As of June 2024, there are 2,535 delivery companies, using 40,088 motorcycles in Dubai. As for the rest areas, their locations were chosen, bearing in mind such factors as operational data and demand levels in cooperation with delivery companies.
All these rest areas are located in the highly demanded areas of the city like Hessa Street, Al Barsha Heights, Al Karama, Jumeirah, Business Bay, Dubai Marina, etc.
Though purposefully built to reduce direct sunlight access, each rest area includes conditioned areas that offer vending machines and water dispensers and places to charge cell phones and/or portable electronic devices.
Each of the facilities should be able to hold up to 10 riders depending on the area of jurisdiction and adequate parking compartments for motorcycles should be made available.
Apart from enhancing working environment for delivery riders, RTA has also launched the Delivery Service Excellence Award. This award is useful as it will help to stimulate a competitive environment related to delivery companies and their drivers, thus, making them to strive to follow traffic laws, avoid accidents and improve on the quality of services they are proffering to their clients.
The award has two categories: as one for companies and another one for individual drivers, which has very high selection criteria including safety, quality and customer satisfaction.
