Already home to the world's biggest skyscraper, Dubai has another tall
order to fill: By 2030, its leader wants 25 percent of all trips on its
roads to be done by driverless vehicles.
Tuesday's announcement by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum came
without warning and with few details, as is sometimes the case with the
many aspirations of the leadership of the United Arab Emirates.
In this car-crazed city-state of over 1.5 million registered vehicles,
it's not unusual to see Ferraris idling alongside Lamborghinis at
traffic lights. And Dubai already is home to a driverless Metro rail
system, which carried 178 million riders in 2015.
According to Sheikh Mohammed,"Today, we lay down a clear strategy with specific goals for smart
transportation to form one of the key drivers for achieving sustainable
economy in the UAE,"Dubai boasts the world's tallest building with the 2,717-foot
(828-meter) Burj Khalifa, which opened in 2010. In 2020, it will host
the World Expo, a world's fair that is held every five years.We are already planning to get these driverless vehicle sellers and conduct live test-runs for these vehicles in Dubai."
"By and large, technology is not going to be the bottleneck for bringing this to market,"But as drivers vanish, so do jobs. Dubai has a number of taxi companies,
driven by a large labor force from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and
other mostly Asian countries"
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