Dubai motorists to face less traffic and get faster RTA services: Here’s how

Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has unveiled an Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategy aimed at alleviating traffic congestion, improving bus services and enhancing overall customer experience. RTA Director General Mattar Al Tayer unveiled the strategy, which targets a 3-5% reduction in traffic, a 10% boost in bus punctuality and a 10-20% drop in accidents involving new drivers.

The initiative also seeks to generate over Dh300 million in annual added value and transition half of RTA's operations to an Agentic AI ecosystem by 2026 and 2027.

The AI strategy focuses on AI-powered vehicle licensing, with RTA's smart chatbot, Mahboub, being upgraded to complete transactions online within five minutes. The platform will double its service delivery speed and increase online services by 10% by the end of 2026 and 50% by the end of 2027. RTA also unveiled an AI-driven auditing system for licensing documents, which aims to accelerate checks by up to 21 times, expand coverage and save over 25,000 manual work hours annually.

Dubai's bus network will benefit from an Agentic AI-powered Network Planner, which analyses performance indicators and recommends improvements to increase bus on-time performance by up to 10%, reduce service change implementation time from 60 to 48 days and boost cost recovery ratio by 3-7%. Additionally, the AI strategy includes initiatives to expedite customer services such as case processing, complaint handling and electronic No Objection Certificates (eNOC), with the aim of cutting processing times by 20-30%, waiting times by 14-16%, and delivery times by 15-20%.