The RTA will open the Dubai Metro’s Green line in the second half of 2010, more than three months past the original deadline.

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

In September MEED reported that the Green line would begin operations by June 2010, three months later than planned, due to a seven-kilometre extension to the route (MEED 01:09:09).

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

Dubai Metro’s Red line opened on 9 September 2009, although only 10 of the 29 stations are currently operational.

On 15 November the RTA announced that construction works had finished on the remaining 19 stations and that there would be a phased opening of the stations starting from February 2010.

The RTA has also confirmed that the entire metro project is about 80 per cent over budget. The likely cost is now close to $7.6bn.

When the project was first announced in 2005, the original budget for the Red and Green lines was about $4.2bn.