Dubai’s Roads & Transport Authority (RTA) has invited consultants to bid for a contract to study and design the Airport Express Line, which will extend from Dubai International airport (DXB) in the Al-Garhoud area of the city to Al-Maktoum International airport (DWC) in the Jebel Ali area.
The proposed line will stretch about 55 kilometres (km) and include five stations that will provide passengers with facilities such as remote airline check-in, baggage drop-off and security screening.
The consultants have been allowed until June to submit their proposals.
The new line will run from the Red Line metro station at DXB through Al-Jaddaf, along Al-Khail Road to a new station at Jumeirah Village Circle (JVC) before continuing on to DWC.
There will be two spur lines. The first will run from the new JVC station to the Al-Fardan Exchange metro station at Emirates Golf Club, while the second will branch out towards Business Bay, where another station will be built.
It appears that the new line will follow a similar route to that of the Etihad Rail high-speed railway project, which is now under construction and is due to be completed by 2030.
The Airport Express Line scheme is the latest metro project to be tendered by the RTA this year. Tendering activity is already ongoing for the Route 2020 extension, which will start from the Expo 2020 metro station and connect to DWC’s West Terminal.
Earlier in April, MEED exclusively reported that consultants had submitted bids for the project.
The extension to the line will run for about 3km and will feature two stations.
The existing Route 2020 metro link is a 15km-long line that branches off the Red Line at Jebel Ali metro station. The line comprises 11.8km of elevated tracks and 3.2km of tunnels, and has five elevated stations and two underground stations.
The RTA awarded the AED10.6bn ($2.9bn) design-and-build contract for the project to a consortium of Spain’s Acciona, Turkiye’s Gulermak and France’s Alstom in 2016.
Dubai’s plans for its metro network do not stop with connecting the extension of the Route 2020 metro line to DWC. There are long-term plans for further extensions. More
By Yasir Iqbal MEED
