New Dubai Metro rail line Route 2020 to come up soon

DUBAI: The Dubai Metro Rail is a magnificent transport system. It has two routes, Red and Green, covering most part of the city and connects to airport terminal 1 and 3, a total track distance of 75 km. Dubai Metro is the world's longest fully automated, driverless metro network. Three more lines are in the pipeline. The next extension will add 15 km of track, from Ibn Battuta to the Expo 2020 site. The existing lines have 47 stations.

The preparations for Route 2020, the 14.5-km extension of the Dubai Metro, are in full swing, according to the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA). Shahrin Salam, chief engineer of the RTA’s rail operations department, said at the Mena Rail and Metro Summit last week that the Route 2020 project work is likely to start “in the second half of next year.” The MENA Rail & Metro Summit is an annual industry event,a gathering of experts working in GCC and North African rail and metro.

The Route 2020 will connect the Nakheel Harbour and Tower stations on the Red Line with the Expo 2020 site. The tender submissions will close in December and the contract will go to the winning consortium in January.

A technology for quick dispersal of crowds and consisting of three tracks stations instead of those with two as of now are some of the salient features of the upcoming Expo extension. It wil have five elevated and two underground seven stations.

The new line will serve locations high-density populations like Discovery Gardens, Al Furjan, Jumeirah Golf Estate and Dubai Investment Park, handling a traffic estimated at 240,000. It is planned to connect Al Maktoum International Airport later. The travel time from Dubai Marina to the Expo site will be 16 minutes.

Currently the existing Metro carries 8 to 9 million passengers a month.

A record 9.9 million passengers was recorded in March, with an average daily ridership of 500,000.

Meanwhile, GCC ministerial sources said that the first leg of a GCC railway would start from Kuwait to Bahrain via Saudi Arabia. A bridge from Doha to Bahrain will be built. A line from Saudi Arabia to Abdu Dhabi and Al-Ain and another from Muscat to Sahar too are planned. It will cover 2,117 km. The cost is $15.4 billion. The project would be completed by 2018.

October 15, 2015