Dubai, 11th May 2013 (WAM) -- Mattar Al Tayer, Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), has recently inaugurated the automated 'Takamul' system to compute activity-based costs of public buses.

The System, which is the first of its kind in the transport sector across the Middle East, aims to hook-up different technical systems under one central system, calculate cost-revenue elements of bus activity, generate performance indicators related to cost & revenue elements, and issue financial reports electronically.

Al Tayer heeded to a briefing co-delivered by Dr. Yousef Mohammad Al Ali, Acting CEO of Public Transport Agency, and Adel Shakri, Director of Transport Systems at the Agency, spotlighting the System which links 7 different systems namely, Transport Electronic System, Government Resource Planning System, Fuel System, Scheduling System, Maximo Maintenance System, Unified Card System "NOL", and Vehicles Automatic Control System.

Elaborating on the new system, Dr. Al Ali, said, "The system calculates direct and indirect costs and revenues of nearly 46 elements, including the costs of bus depreciation, fuel consumption, insurance, internal and external maintenance, and drivers' salaries and uniforms in addition to the costs of washing and cleaning buses among others. The system also computes revenues accruing from bus rental as well as fares of public transport and inter-city service. Based on these inputs, the system provides a number of indicators, including the percentage of cost coverage, key performance indicators and financial reports.""The system issues reports per bus depot (Al Awir, Al Khawaneej, Al Qusais, Al Ruwayyah and Jebel Ali), in addition to other reports per bus type (standard, articulated, double-decker), service type and route. The system also calculates 16 performance / financial indicators; including direct operation cost and direct revenues indicators," elaborated Dr. Al Ali.

He further added that the Agency had trained 55 employees on how to feed the system with the required information and issue reports.

The system," he noted, "contributes to supporting decision taking, which, in turn can improve the operational efficiency of bus service, be it Metro feeder bus, public bus or inter-city bus service, besides consolidating efforts to realize the overall objectives.

RTA Chairman of the Board and Executive Director paid tribute to the system and directed that the 2nd phase to be generalized to various transport systems, including the Dubai Metro and marine transport means.

Copyright Emirates News Agency (WAM) 2013.