India’s Larsen & Toubro Construction has won a $161m contract for the construction of tracks for the Riyadh Metro’s lines 1 and 2.

The BACS consortium, comprising the US’ Bechtel, the local Almabani General Contractors, Athens-based Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) and Germany’s Siemens, awarded the deal.

The contract covers the construction of 63 kilometres of double ballastless tracks in tunnels, viaducts, at-grade sections and three depots. The project is scheduled to be completed in 40 months.

Tunnelling work for Line 1 began in July.

The planned metro network features six lines (Blue, Green, Red, Orange, Yellow and Purple). It will have 85 air-conditioned stations. The six lines will have a total length of 180 kilometres.

The metro scheme is part of Riyadh’s Public Transport Project (PTP) plan, approved by the Council of Ministers in 2012. The plan has been prepared by the Arriyadh Development Authority.

The BACS consortium won the $9.45bn contract to develop the metro in July 2013.

The contract involves design, construction, rolling stock and signalling for lines 1 and 2 of the project. The consortium is subcontracting large packages of work.

In March, Malaysia’s Eversendai Corporation won a $54m contract from the BACS team for the construction of the east, north and south depots.