Dubai’s Roads & Transport Authority (RTA) has invited firms to submit bids in mid-July for a study that will explore options for increasing the capacity of Dubai Metro system.

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.

As well as increasing the capacity of the existing lines, the RTA is also planning to extend the Red and the Green lines.

In January, the RTA said it is planning to tender an extension of the metro’s existing Green Line by the end of 2015. The Green Line extension will be 20.6 kilometres long with 11 new stations. The Red Line extension will be 3.5km kilometres long and will run from Rashidya to Mirdif City Centre. Both lines are due to be completed in time for the World Expo, which is being held in Dubai in 2020.

A joint venture of US-based Parsons International and France’s Systra was awarded the consultancy contract for the extension to the Green Line of the Dubai Metro in 2009. The Red Line extension was added to the scope later.

This year, the RTA appointed UK-based PwC as an external adviser to explore its options for funding the extensions of the Red and Green lines of the city’s metro.

PwC will look at the possibility of raising funding from banks and other private sources to finance the project, and whether the extensions could be structured as a public-private partnership (PPP). It will also look at the possibility of using the PPP model to develop commercial space around three existing stations on the metro. Funds raised from this would then be used to help finance the metro line extensions.

Another extension to Dubai Metro will connect to the Expo 2020 site next to Al-Maktoum International airport, in the Jebel Ali area. In April, the RTA received two bids from consultants for the contract to complete the preliminary engineering for the new metro line.

It is understood the link could be a standalone system, meaning it could operate using different rolling stock and systems to the existing Green and Red lines of the Dubai Metro.

There are four possible alignments for the new line running from an interchange station on the Red Line in the Jumeirah Lake Towers/Jebel Ali area up to the Expo site.