Dubai transport on the fast track

Dubai's Road and Transport Authority (RTA) has announced it will build a third metro line to provide a high-speed link between the Dubai International and Jebel Ali airports.

The 49-km Purple Line will cut travel time between the two airports to just 40 minutes and have eight stations along its length, three of which will provide airline check-in services for passengers. Estimated to cost $2.73 billion, the Purple Line is to be jointly funded by the RTA and the department of civil aviation.

According to Mattar al-Tayer, RTA's chairman, the design work for the project will begin immediately and be completed in 12 months. Following that, "the RTA will put the project out to tender for construction and select a contractor during the period from May 2008 to March 2009," he said. "The project will be constructed in 45 months starting from March 2009, and service on the Purple Line is scheduled to start in December 2012."

The new line, along with Metro's other routes, will be one of the most advanced rail systems in the world. Designed to be completely electronic, it will be driverless and fully automated with the entire network managed by computers based at a control centre located in Rashidiya. Al-Tayer said the entire metro system is being designed to connect to other public transportation in an effort to integrate Dubai's road, rail and waterborne transport network.

The first two sections of the Metro, the Red and Green Lines, with a budget of $4.2 billion, are expected to have a combined length of 75 km. The 52-km Red Line, which will run from Rashidiya to Jebel Ali and pass the American University of Dubai on its route, is due to come into service in September 2009. Trains are scheduled to start running on the shorter Green Line, which will go from the Al Ittihad Square to Rashidiya bus station through Health Care City and Dubai Airport Terminals 1 and 3, in early 2010.

Though the trains on the Purple Line will travel at an average speed of 100 km an hour, they will be capable of hitting speeds of up to 160 km an hour, making them one of the fastest moving intra-city services in existence. By contrast, trains on the first two sections, both of which are already under construction, travel at a more sedate 45 km an hour.

The route of a proposed fourth metro link, the Blue Line, has yet to be determined but is expected to also connect the country's two main airports. There has also been talk of the network being extended all the way to the border with Sharjah along the Al Ittihad Road.

Dubai officials estimate that together, the Red and Green Lines will be able to transport 1.2 million people per day around the city, picking them up and dropping them off at a series of 50 or more stations, at least nine of them below ground level. Both will have links to the new Purple Line, further integrating the network. When fully completed, the system potentially could have 1.8 million passengers daily.

In order to speed up the construction process started in February 2006, and to minimise disruption to the city, work on the first two lines is being carried out at more than 30 sites simultaneously, rather than progressing stage by stage.

The first two lines are being constructed by the Dubai Rail Link consortium, which includes Japanese firms Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the Mitsubishi Corporation, and the Obayashi Corporation and Turkey's Yapi Merkezi, with work beginning in February last year.

"So far around 30% of the work has been completed," said Adnan al-Hammadi, the RTA's director of construction for the project, in an April interview with an industry magazine. "The work currently is approximately on schedule and all the parties are committed to accomplish the project in time."

With Dubai's population anticipated to hit 3 million by 2010, and long-term projections for tourism predicting as many as 17 million international arrivals annually by around the middle of the next decade, the emirate is going to have a lot of people on the move. Its colourful metro system may be just the ticket for keeping Dubai's transport on the rails.

Jason J. Nash is Head of Research at the Oxford Business Group

(www.oxfordbusinessgroup.com)

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Metro Transport
Posted by Sandra, Sharjah, UAE on Saturday 19 January 2008 at 17:30 UAE time

It would make a lot of commuter's lives easier if there was a metro line connecting to Sharja and Ajman. It would be interesting to know what the plans are at this stage for these regions...

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