First phase construction of Dubai Metro is on track

Dubai: Construction of the largest proposed light rapid transit system in the world is on track and on time, delegates heard at a regional railway conference in Dubai on Wednesday.

The first phase of the Dh15.5-billion Dubai Metro will be completed by September 2009, contrary to some predictions abroad that the Roads and Transport Authority's deadline is too optimistic, pledged Abdul Majid Al Khaja, the RTA's chief executive officer overseeing the rail project.

One quarter of the work on the first 52.1-kilometre metro line is complete and construction on a second 17.6-kilometre Green line is scheduled to begin in a few months, he said.

The new metro lines are part of Dubai's largest infrastructure project ever undertaken, a fully automated, driverless railway system in which 100 trains will whisk 650 million passengers every year to 56 stations along four separate lines to be completed by 2011.

"Forty-nine months for such a calibre of project is a very challenging task. We are on time, this is important," Al Khaja said on the first of the two-day Middle East Rail 2006 conference.

"I have been to conferences in many other countries [where] many of them do not believe it will happen. We tell them it will happen in Dubai."

He told 300 railway and business leaders that the metro is critical to meet Dubai's growing population that is predicted to climb to 5.5 million by 2020.

Al Khaja said the RTA has a huge fast-tracking advantage over other planning organisations because "the system is different here, we don't have bureaucrats here."