Dubai, August 06: New York City has its iconic yellow cabs and now Dubai hopes its taxis will be eye-catching with new yellow number plates.
The Roads and Transports Authority (RTA) this week began replacing the black plates on the emirate’s 7,400 taxis as part of an ongoing drive of maintaining and revamping the transport sector. The change to bright yellow plates featuring black letters and digits will be completed by January 1 next year.
“Through this project RTA is intending to add more attractive colours in keeping with the project of re-designing the colour code and logo of Dubai Taxicabs undertaken by the RTA,” said Ahmed Hashim Bahrouzyan, the CEO of the authority’s Licensing Agency.
“The change is also in response to customer wishes who complained about the vague plates at certain times, particularly at night,” he said.
The drive will be generalised to cover all taxicabs in the emirate operating under five companies — the government-owned Dubai Taxi, Arabian Taxi, Cars Taxi, National Taxi and the Metro Taxi.
Adnan Al Hammadi, acting CEO of the Dubai Taxi Corporation, said that only the Dubai Taxi, which runs more than 3,500 vehicles, will have the new number plates by August-end.
“The other four taxi franchise companies have been given a deadline till January 1 next year to change. They will not be allowed to operate if they don’t meet the deadline,” he said.
–Agencies