In 2007, the Roads and Transport Authority introduced the Salik road-toll system. Currently, there are eight toll gates and three million registered vehicles, 1.8 million of which are registered in Dubai.
The Road toll collection operator, Salik has introduced a strategy of ‘dynamic pricing’ for the reduction of congestion of traffic on Dubai roads. The Road and Transport Authority (RTA) is planning on the optimization depending on the schedule that is planned by the department.
Abdul Muhsen Kalabat, vice-chairman of the Salik Board of Directors said “Currently, we have fixed a fee of Dh4 for Salik. But there are other dynamic systems around the world that charge more during peak hours than off-peak hours. That is called dynamic pricing. This is based on a transportation study that will be conducted by the RTA and Salik to achieve the common goal of seamless transportation in the emirate. All this will be subject to approval from the Executive Council of Dubai.”
The dynamic pricing is considered as one of the tools being applied to the Salik system. A flexibility of tarrifs and initializing increase in the number of toll gates is also being looked into by the department. As mentioned by Mattar Al Tayer, chairman of Salik, the flexibility and initialization shall be studied and investigated by the RTA and Salik. The Executive Council will take a final decision in this regard.
