Dubai: Names of at least two stations on the Red Line of the Dubai Metro have been changed just a couple of weeks before the launching of the operation, Gulf News has learnt.
A senior official at the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) confirmed that the name of the earlier known BurJuman Station has been changed to Khalid Bin Waleed Station. It is also the name of the road on which the station is located in Bur Dubai.
The Dubal Metro station located between Ibn Battuta Station and the Jebel Ali Industrial Station on Shaikh Zayed Road has also been renamed as 'Energy Station'. The station was earlier named after the Dubai Aluminum Company Ltd (DUBAL).
The official said that the name of BurJuman Centre, a shopping malls next to the station, has been dropped after the management of the centre refused to buy the naming rights of the station. "The RTA persuaded the BurJuman Centre to buy the naming rights of the station but both the parties could not reach the deal which involved hefty amount," he added.
Eisa Adam Ebrahim, General Manager of BurJuman Centre said: "We did not take the naming rights and we ourselves never called the station as 'BurJuman Station." However, he did not elaborate why the station's name was changed.
The station names have also been changed on the new metro maps.
Khalid Bin Waleed Station is one of the underground interchange stations where the Red and the Green Lines cross each other offering passengers to change trains. The only other interchange station where the Lines meet is the Union Square underground station in Deira.
In March last year, the RTA offered some 23, out of 47 stations, and the Red and the Green lines of the Dubai Metro project for corporate branding as part of its major public-private partnership initiative.
The minimum price for naming a station starts from Dh6 million per year and Dh60 million for 10-years. So far Etisalat has paid the highest price of Dh135 million for a station in Al Qusais on the Green Line for a period of 10 years. The naming rights are available for a minimum of 10 years from the start of Metro operation from September 9.
Out of the 23 stations on offer for naming rights, only 10 have been awarded to the companies.
