The trains may not stop at all the stations when the Dubai Metro starts with its 52km Red Line this September. This is because work on all the stations is unlikely to be complete by then.
“We have had some difficulties,” Mattar Al Tayer, Executive Director of the Roads and Transport Authority, said at a conference here on Tuesday.
“Maybe some of the stations will not be open.”
He said that the delays were the fault of private companies working on the project and not the RTA’s.
It will be clear only around the second week of July as to which stations will stay held up by the launch date of September 9.
The main contractor for the Red Line is a consortium led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI). However, according to engineers working on other areas of the Metro, the contract for developing the stations was sub-contracted.
Nasser Al Shaikh, Director-general of the Dubai Department of Finance, was quoted in a Reuters report as having said that several contractors on the Metro project had in fact not been paid on time. However, he said, as of February the accounts had been settled. No one from MHI was available for comment on whether this had impacted construction schedules.
The Red Line, which will run between Rashidiya and Jebel Ali on Shaikh Zayed Road, is to have 29 confirmed stations. This includes 24 elevated stations, four underground stations and one station at ground level.
Al Tayer said that by September, there will be 700 buses made available to transport individuals to Metro stations. In addition, the RTA is also arranging three ‘park and ride’ stations, the largest being near the Ibn Battuta Mall, where 6,000 spaces will be available.
Meanwhile, a local media company has signed a Dh30 million contract to provide “special coverage” for the Roads and Transport Authority.
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