UST: News

The United Arab Emirates in general and Dubai in particular, are the key points of trade and logistics, not only in the region, but also in the world. Re-export is an important source of income for this rich city, and recently the tourism sector has been growing rapidly in it, too. The basis for the development of both trade and tourism is an efficient and modern transport infrastructure: commercial ports, high-speed urban and intercity lines, airports.

Dubai's leadership is well aware of the importance of the transport sector for the city's development. Therefore, the local transport authority has developed a long-term infrastructure development plan. The priority now is automation, hi-tech level and environmental friendliness.

The most ambitious and technically challenging task that Dubai transport workers have set for themselves is to increase the share of autonomous transport in the city up to 25% by 2030. According to estimates, this measure should save up to 44% of transportation costs and reduce the level of environmental pollution by 12%. In the future, the transition to self-driving vehicles should improve the situation with traffic jams and parking lots in the city.

In an interview to the Gulf News, the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority said that Dubai Sky Pods, the urban transportation system developed by SkyWay Technologies Co., is considered as one of the innovative projects aimed at improving the Dubai transport system. Dubai Sky Pods is a futuristic mobility system, the advantages of which are high power efficiency and low material intensity of the track structure.

In addition to Dubai Sky Pods, the city plans to introduce an autonomous air taxi and self-driving modules to solve the "last mile problem". It is also planned to improve the quality of digital infrastructure in Dubai — for this, the authorities plan to use artificial intelligence in traffic control, safety systems, crisis management and other areas.

In addition to the widespread introduction of artificial intelligence, part of Dubai's digital strategy is the use of blockchain technologies. The city needs it to transfer the flow of information online and make it faster, friendlier to users and more secure. With the help of blockchain, Dubai leadership intends to carry out the workflow, payment for goods and services, checking visas and driving licenses. According to the estimates of the authorities, the digitalization of state documents only will save up to 3 billion dollars.

Sustainable development of an actively growing city is another important task for transport authorities. So as the actively growing city did not cause harm to nature, it is planned to increase the use of electric cars and hybrid cars. To do this, the city taxi park will replace cars ICE with hybrids and electric cars. Also, in order to reduce the harm that transport causes to nature, new passenger buses will be equipped with engines that meet high environmental standards.

The inclusion of SkyWay string transport in Dubai's infrastructure development strategy is a far-sighted decision that fully complies with the development vector chosen by the city's leadership. Automation, environmental friendliness and hi-tech level of a new type of transport will provide Dubai with the opportunity to create an initially sustainable system of passenger and cargo traffic allowing to avoid the endless process of modernizing predeterminedly outdated transport based on internal combustion engines, manual control and "paper" information exchange.