Dubai’s Roads & Transport Authority (RTA) says that more than 180 million passengers used the emirate’s public transport network in the first half of 2011.

Public transport in the emirate includes Dubai metro, buses, water transport and taxis.

This number is also likely to increase once the second line of the metro, the Green line opens in September.

The RTA is aiming to reduce the use of private vehicles and increase the use of public transport to 30 per cent by 2020. Currently, the use of public transport in 2011 is about 11 per cent.

In the first six months of the year, 28.9 million passengers used Dubai metro. March saw the most passengers, recording just over five million passengers in that month. Al-Ittihad and Khalid bin al-Waleed stations recorded the most passengers.

In the metro’s first year of operation, it carried 30 million passengers (MEED 8:9:10).

The number of passengers on the public buses was more than 54 million, passengers using water transport, including abras and water taxis hit 7.2 million, while Dubai’s taxis carried about 90 million passengers in the first six months of 2011.