Dubai: A kilometre-long detour will be in place on Dubai Airport Road from Thursday as work on expansion of the busy road gathers pace, the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) announced on Tuesday.
Work on the Dh404-million project began earlier this year, but was so far limited to the transferring of underground utility lanes.
The phase one of the detour, which will start from Emirates Airlines head office, passes through the Marrakech Road junction and moves all the way to the offices of Habtoor Leighton Group, in the direction of Khawaneej.
Expected to last for nearly two months, the diversion will make space for work on the existing road where a six-lane flyover will replace the signalised Marrakech Road-Airport Road junction.
The work on the Marrakech Road Interchange also includes a ramp from the flyover in the direction of Terminal 3 of Dubai International Airport bypassing the traffic signal.
The upgrade of the junction will also see construction of a two-lane tunnel to serve the traffic heading left from Airport Road in the direction of Marrakech Road. The upgrade is expected to reduce the waiting time at the interchange from seven minutes to less than a minute.
Maitha Mohammad Bin Adai, CEO of RTA’s Traffic & Roads Agency, said that the 1.1-kilometre detour will not hamper the traffic movement as the existing number of lanes will be maintained.
“The RTA has charted out a plan for traffic diversions all along the Airport Road in both directions, which involves providing a permanent detour throughout the period of road expansion work. The diversion will be executed in two phases. We will ensure a smooth traffic flow by maintaining the same number of the existing traffic lanes,” she said.
The Airport Road expansion project is part of a plan to cater to the growing demands of Dubai International Airport, which is expected to serve about 92 million passengers by 2020.
Once completed, the handling capacity of Airport Road will increase by an extra 5,000 vehicles per hour, reducing the journey time on Airport Road between Mohammad Bin Rashid interchange to Casablanca interchange from 30 minutes to five minutes.
Following the enhancements, the Airport Road will see construction of bridges and tunnels at Casablanca Road and Nad Al Hamar Road junctions as well.
Work also includes improving at-grade intersections, and construction of a service road of three lanes in each direction to separate the traffic movement from and to Nad Al Hamar from the traffic on Airport Road starting from Al Rashidiya Interchange up to Marrakech Interchange.
At Al Rashidiya Interchange, a six-lane flyover will be constructed, which is expected to reduce the waiting time at the interchange from 13 minutes to less than one minute.
Work on Nad Al Hamar Road Interchange will include construction of an additional flyover of two lanes in each direction to serve the traffic coming from Nad Al Hamar Road heading towards Airport Road.
The project will ease the current snarls resulting from the overlapping traffic at Nad Al Hamar interchange between the first ramp heading to the left from Nad Al Hamar Road to Airport Road, and the second ramp heading left from Airport Road to Nad Al Hamar Road.
The Casablanca interchange upgrade includes the construction of an additional single-lane bridge to serve the traffic from Airport Road in the direction of Casablanca Road without waiting at the traffic signal.
It also includes the construction of an alternative road for traffic coming from Al Garhoud enabling vehicles direct access to Terminal 1 and 3 of Dubai International Airport, besides increasing the number of lanes of Casablanca Road from three to four lanes.
The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2017.
