Dubai’s Roads & Transport Authority (RTA) has signed a AED 10.6 billion contract with the Alstom-led Expolink Consortium to extend Dubai’s Red Line.
Known as ‘Route 2020’, the 15-kilometre extension will link the Expo 2020 site to the metro network.
The Expolink Consortium, which includes Alstom, Acciona and Turkey’s Gulermack, beat nine other consortia to construct the link, which will include 11.8 kilometres of viaduct and 3.2 kilometres of tunnel.
The contract includes 50 new trains, of which 15 will serve the Expo and 35 will be used to increase service levels across the Dubai Metro network, RTA has said.
Passenger service is scheduled to begin in May 2020 – a few months before Dubai hosts the region’s first World Expo event. The extension is a critical piece of infrastructure for the event, which is expected to receive 25 million visitors over the course of the six months it is open.
RTA has estimated that 125,000 passengers a day will use the line when it opens in 2020, increasing to 275,000 by 2030.
HE Mattar Al Tayer, director general and chairman of the board of executive directors of the RTA, said: “Construction works in the project will start in the final quarter of this year, and the trial run is expected to start in the last quarter of 2019.”
The contract was signed during a ceremony at the Armani Hotel in Dubai earlier this week.
