Dubai’s Roads & Transport Authority (RTA) has extended the closing date for consultants to submit proposals for a study that will explore options for increasing the capacity of Dubai Metro system.

The new deadline is 5 August. Firms had earlier been preparing to submit offers in mid-July.

The study will analyse passenger flows and look at increasing the capacity at major stations such as Burjuman, Burj Khalifa/Dubai Mall, Rashidiya and Mall of the Emirates, as well as the possibility of adding new stations to the network on the existing Green and Red lines.

The improvements to existing stations could involve adjusting passenger flows at bottlenecks, such as escalators and ticket turnstiles, as well are more major changes that could require construction work to reconfigure the stations.

The RTA says that during the first quarter of this year, there were 40.7 million passengers that used Dubai Metro, up about 22 per cent on the 33.3 million that used the network during the same period in 2013.