Source: www.dubaicityguide.com
The Roads & Transport Authority (RTA) is all set to open tomorrow, Friday, seven new metro stations; namely: Emirates, Airport Terminal 1, Al Karama, Emirates Towers, Dubai Internet City, Dubai Marina, and Ibn Battuta stations.
The new stations will receive passengers as of 02 pm tomorrow up to midnight, and reopen for passenger service from Saturday to Thursday from 06 am up to 11 pm.
As of tomorrow, Friday, RTA Unified Automated Fare Collection Dep’t will offer Nol Blue Cards instead of Nol Silver Cards at the same cost and for a limited period; as the RTA had already sold about 2 million Nol Silver Cards since last August.
H.E. Mattar Al Tayer, Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of the RTA stressed that the new stations were ready to receive passengers. 20 trains will be operated during peak time and 15 trains during off-peak time and the service will be run on a 6 minutes heady (frequency) during peak time and 8 minutes headway during off-peak time.
“The Contractor has put the final touches to the new stations, including the finishing works on the floors, fitting & commissioning of escalators and lifts, internal lighting and fittings required for special needs passengers such as tactile floor guiding optically impaired commuters to their intended destinations in addition to the audio-visual PA systems.
Due attention has also been given to the finishing works of walls and aesthetic elements of all stations. The interior design of stations has been inspired by their historical implications and themed after the four elements of nature: Water, Air, Fire and Earth. Inspection was carried out to pedestrian footbridges linking the metro stations with both sides of the road.
These elevated walkways are air-conditioned and offer a wide space for the movement of the public crossing between the two sides of Sheikh Zayed Road, and have been fitted with travelators and feature top quality finishing in a way that brings about a revolution in the link between pedestrians and the city, besides advancing the drive towards minimizing the reliance on private vehicles. Inspection also included arrangements made for allocating parking spaces for buses and taxis at each station as well as the required directional signage and others.
Al Tayer added: “Serco Co, which is attending to Dubai Metro operation, has also finalized all trial technical testing of the metro operations, including testing the communication system, auto operation systems, power feed, air-conditioning, onboard electromechanical systems, signaling & lighting system and integration & coordination with various subsystems and components.
The operator has also finalized the training of front-end employees deployed at stations on various systems and they have already joined up their duties in different locations several days ago following the completion of intensive training courses in the fields of customer service, implementation of rules and regulations introduced by the RTA for safeguarding the project facilities, and enforcement of the law against offenders.
“Public Transport Agency has completed the training of bus drivers on the new Feeder Bus service for the metro stations to be opened. 28 feeder buses have been deployed to link the metro stations with the neighbourhood and the service will be run at 13-20 minutes headway” stated Al Tayer.
It is worth-mentioning that since its inception on 090909 till the end of last March, Dubai Metro has lifted about 13.68 million passengers and the number of daily ridership is about 80 thousand passengers. The number is geared to rise in excess of 100 thousand passengers with the opening of the new metro stations.
The number of the metro users is estimated to hit 35 million passengers in 2010 and is likely to receive a further boost in August 2011 with the operation of the Green Line; which serves vital areas with intense commercial and public activities as well as high population density.
