Dubai Road and Transport Authority is in talks to revive the suspended Dubai
Metro Purple Line, a contractor on the railway has said.
“We have been talking with the RTA on a regular basis,” said
Dawood Bin
Ozair, managing director of Al-Futtaim Engineering, which worked on Dubai Metro’s
Red Line.
“There is potential for the Purple Line to also be
revived, and then there is potential for metros coming up in Abu Dhabi and
Qatar.”
The $2.73bn high-speed track, announced in June 2007, was set to run from
Dubai International Airport to Al Maktoum International in Jebel Ali.
Plans for the original line showed a 49km link with eight
stations along its length. It was intended to cut travel time between the two
airports to 40 minutes.
Instead, the track was halted in the wake of the global financial crisis
as the state-backed RTA struggled to secure funding to fund its infrastructure
pipeline.
The RTA’s CEO for strategy and corporate governance, Abdul
Younes, said
in January the agency would seek private funding for almost a third of its
infrastructure projects over the next five years in a bid to
spread the cost and risk of building the emirate.
The RTA is also mulling the privatisation of its water taxi
services, he said.
The agency last month said that Dubai’s Metro Green Line is on schedule
to open to the public in August 2011, after funding delays slowed its progress.
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