Thursday, November 29, 2007

No surprise, it's a design error.

What everyone else seems have to been able to see from the beginning, the RTA didn't see.

Why am I not surprised.

The obvious fault in the air-conditioned bus shelter design has hit the news today, now that the shelters are appearing all over Dubai.

They ain't big enough!



The RTA's policy is to have much more public transport - excellent - and to 'encourage' people to abandon their cars in favour of it. Not a strong possibility if we have to stand around in 50C heat and 100% humidity, so the RTA came up with a good solution - a/c bus stops.

But we have already-crowded buses, the population of Dubai increasing by 800 people a day, everyone told to use public transport...and the bus shelters are designed to take a maximum of 14 people, eight seated and six standing. I must say that seems like an optimistic number, they're only 2.5 x 6 metres.

The problem has obviously been recognised - far too late - because many places have two of the shelters side-by-side...



It should have been thought of at the design stage! When you start with a blank canvass there is no excuse.

Given the culture in which we're living, another interesting point was raised by a Gulf News reader - why are there no separate shelters for ladies?

You can read the Gulf News report here.

3 comments:

LDU said...

Some people will be able to enjoy the aircon, most probably wont.

Anonymous said...

I also had another question concerning this bus stops. I noticed that they have manually sliding doors. So let's say someone leaves the doors open. The air condition will continuously pump cool air which will definitely escape......

Environmentally speaking, isn't there a huge potential waste of energy?

Seabee said...

I hadn't noticed that. Yes, doors left open on a/c buildings annoy the hell out of me, it is a huge waste of energy.