The Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has revealed that the sales of NOL cards continued to soar considerably since the launch of the service in August 2009. During the first six months of this year NOL card sales proceeds increased by as much as 52 per cent compared with the previous period last year.
Khalid Al Awadi, Director of RTA Automated Fare Collection, said: "The total number of NOL cards sold in the first half of this year amounted to 1.226 million cards whereas the number recorded during the same period last year was 806,000 cards; which translates into a 52 per cent increase. This means that the service is continuing to hit its key objective of easing the use of public transport means for the public, and encouraging customers to use mass transit modes by using the three categories of NOL cards (Gold, Silver and Personalised Blue Card); which are characterised by simplicity, accuracy and speedy payment of the applicable fare.”
"The rising trend of purchasing NOL cards underscores our success in augmenting our partnership with the public through this service; which was crowned by winning the Best Partnership with the Public in the inaugural edition of the Hamdan bin MohammedSmart Government Awards, besides being an indicator of the growing use of public transport means comprising the metro, water bus, public transport and taxis, and the use of the RTA's prepaid parking service,” said Al Awadi.
"The RTA is always keen on uplifting its service offering to meet customer needs and realise the third goal (people's happiness). Recently, it embarked on broadening the use of NOL cards to include the payment of fare of the inter-city bus service.”
"The RTA is mulling the implementation of a plan to widen the use of NOL cards to include other fields over and above paying for public transport such as prepaid purchases, thanks to the value stored in the card balance,” added the director.