Dubai Metro Green line to open in second half of 2010

14 December 2009

Extension to rail route delays deadline

Dubai Metro’s Green line will now start operations in the second half of 2010, more than three months later than the original deadline, according to a senior transport official in the emirate.

It will follow more than nine months after the opening of the Red line. Services started on 9 September 2009, although only 10 of the 29 stations on that line are now open.

Work on stations on the second, Green line is currently 50 to 80 per cent complete, according to Mattar Al-Tayer, chairman and executive director of the Roads & Transport Authority (RTA).

In September, MEED reported that the Green line would begin operating by June 2010, three months later than planned, due to a 7-kilometre extension to the route (MEED 1:9:09).

The 23-kilometre Green line will run between Al-Qusais and Al-Jadaf. It will have 18 stations, six of which will be underground.

On 15 November, the RTA announced that construction work has finished on the remaining 19 stations of the Red line and that there will be a phased opening of the stations from February 2010.

The RTA has also confirmed that the entire metro project is about 80 per cent over budget, with the likely cost almost $7.6bn. When the project was first announced in 2005, the original budget for the Red and Green lines was about $4.2bn.

 

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