Design change will delay Green line to August 2011

21 February 2010

Dubai Metro’s second line was due to open in the second half of 2010

The opening of Dubai Metro’s Green line has been delayed by more than a year due to a change in the design.

The 23-kilometre Green line was scheduled to open in the second half of 2010 but now is delayed to August 2011, says Abdelmohsin Ibrahim, chief executive officer of strategy and corporate governance at Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).

The RTA says 10 of the remaining 18 stations on the metro’s Red line are expected to begin operation on 25 April.

The 10 stations include Emirates station, Airport Terminal 1 station, GGICO station, Al-Karama station, World Trade Centre station, Sharaf DG station, Marina station, First Gulf Bank station, Al-Quoz station and Ibn Battuta station.

The rest of the stations will be opened in the remaining months of 2010, according to Mattar al-Tayer, executive director of the RTA.

The transport agency has a total budget of $2.9bn to spend in 2010, with $2.1bn earmarked for 120 projects this year (MEED 24:01:10).

The RTA says it will use part of this budget to pay for the additional works on the Red and Green lines of Dubai Metro, which include adding more stations to each of the lines and increasing the number of footbridges linked to the stations.

The remaining cost of the works will be covered through the project contractor Dubai Rail Link consortium, which has reached an agreement with the RTA.

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