By Haseeb Haider www.khaleejtimes.com
Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority will announce next year its plans on “more lines and extensions”, to the Metro network, after revisiting its master plan, an official said.
Since, the studies on proposed extensions are there, the master plan, the chief executive officer said “will exactly see when to initiative those projects” in the new economic situation.
“We have so many lines…We have Purple, we have blue, which all will be revisited… to see the feasibility… the whole issue is how to go about it…”, said Adnan Al Hammadi, Chief Executive officer of the Rail Agency of Dubai Road and Transport Authority or RTA, on the sidelines of an Roadex-Railex conference in the capital. The chief executive officer said that “there are planned extensions to the Red Line as well as Green Line, which are being revisited and will be announced in the master plan next year.” He said that master plan will also review targets for the passenger traffic. Al Hammadi did not give any time line on the announcement.
About the passenger handling targets for the year, the CEO said those “targets are not applicable in the wake of the economic situation, as they were based on the growth of Dubai before the economic boom.” Speaking about the Green Line, the phase two of the Metro in Dubai, Al Hammadi said that the 22- kilometres long line will be opened in August 2011 to connect Al Ghusais with the drydocks in Jadaf areas linking through CBD. He expected that the passenger numbers will be “much more” than handled by the Red Line which on an average transported 50,000 passengers in the first year of its operations. However, Al Hammadi said that passenger traffic in the first half of the year was more than expectations.
“There are 20 stations on the 22-kilometres long Red Line,” he said.
The average time interval between trains is 6-8 minutes, which comes to 4.5 minutes on holidays, to cater to the needs of the commuters.
Speaking about Al Sufouh, the tram service that will serve the Marina the Chief Executive said the nine kilometres long line is “on track.”
With 13-stations, the Line will be up and running in 2013-14, he said.
The transport project, which will cost over Dh4 billion was being financed by the government, he said.
