RTA awards $2.89bn Dubai Metro contract
Expolink Consortium bags deal for 15km route to connect Expo 2020 site
The Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has awarded a $2.89 billion (Dh10.6b) contract to a consortium of multinational companies to build the Dubai Metro’s Route 2020 extension project.
The Expolink Consortium, which is led by France’s Alstom, Spain’s Acciona, and Turkey’s Gulermack, will work on an extension of the Dubai Metro’s Red Line to the Expo 2020 site near the Al Maktoum Airport from the Nakheel Harbour and Tower station, said Mattar Al Tayer, director general and chairman of the RTA, in a press conference.
Al Tayer added that 10 consortiums had placed their bids for the project in an international tender issued by the RTA. Five were invited to submit their proposals, out of which two were shortlisted for the final stage of awarding the contract.
Construction will start in the final quarter of this year with trial runs expected to begin in late 2019, Al Tayer said. The official date for the line’s inauguration is May 20, 2020, he added, five months before Expo 2020 opens.
The total length of the extension will be 15km, out of which 3.2km of track will run underground while the remaining 11.8km will be on an elevated section. A total of seven stations on the route will include two underground and three elevated ones, as well as the Expo station and the transfer station. Among the localities the line will serve are The Gardens, Discovery Gardens, Al Furjan, Jumeirah Golf Estate and Dubai Investment Park.
The contract mandates the Thales Group to supply the project’s technological systems while Acciona and Gulermack will build the civil works. Alstom will execute the electromechanical works and also supply 50 rakes to Dubai Metro, out of which 15 will run on this route while the rest ply elsewhere on the network.
