adminRIYADH. – Saudi Arabia has granted three foreign consortiums contracts worth US$22,5 billion to build a Riyadh metro, the kingdom announced at a news conference in the capital late on Sunday. The consortiums are led by US, Spanish and Italian firms. The 176-kilometre six-line network is aimed at easing chronic traffic congestion in Riyadh, a city of six million people.
It will “make life easier” in the capital where the population is expected to grow to reach “8,5 million people in the coming 10 years”, said Riyadh governor Prince Khaled bin Bandar said.
A consortium led by US engineering giant Bechtel Corp will construct two lines worth US$9,45 billion, the official SPA news agency reported.
Spanish-led BTP-FCC consortium will build three of the metro lines for US$7,88 billion, after it beat competition from 38 groups that were vying for the project.
It is “the biggest international contract in the history of Spanish construction”, the Spanish consortium said in a statement yesterday.
Alstom, part of the Spanish consortium, added that it was awarded a deal by Saudi Arabia to “provide a complete automatic and driverless metro system to equip three of the six lines.”
Alstom’s share of the deal will be more 1,2 billion euros, a statement said.
“The project also includes also an option for 10 years of maintenance services.”
Another line costing US$5,21 billion went to groups headed by Italy’s Ansaldo.
The lines are planned to stretch across the capital and serve the airport and the future King Abdullah Financial District.
The project also provides bus routes to- and from- metro stations. More than one thousand buses will be deployed for this purpose, Saudi authorities say.
Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is investing billions of dollars in rail networks linking major cities across the vast desert kingdom.
In 2010, Saudi Arabia inaugurated the US$1,8 billion Mashair Railway to transport pilgrims between the holy sites of Mina, Muzdalifah and Arafat, just outside Mecca.
The much larger Haramain High Speed Rail is set to stretch 444 kilometres between Mecca and Medina, the second Muslim holy city, through the Red Sea city of Jeddah. The Mecca Metro is expected to connect to both lines.
The kingdom already has a 449-kilometre passenger line between Riyadh and Dammam in Eastern Province, with a parallel freight line linking the capital with the Gulf coast city. – AFP.
The Riyadh metro, named the King Abdullah project for public transport in Riyadh, will take 56 months to build, according to Prince Khaled.
With the project, the daily use of public transport in the capital with an area of 1,300 kilometres (502 square miles), will increase by more than 20 times, he added.
But he did not say if women, who are banned from driving in the ultraconservative kingdom, will have separate carriages in the country that enforces strict segregation between sexes.
Construction of the metro will begin in the first quarter of 2014, according to local daily Arab News.
It will use solar panels saving 20 percent of the project’s electricity consumption, according to the governor, who oversaw the Sunday signing ceremony.
The rich Gulf monarchies have been racing to build railway systems in their countries.
The first was Dubai that opened its initial metro line in September 2009. The city is currently working on a 1.08-billion-dollar tram project being built by a consortium of European and US companies.
Rail projects are also on the way in Abu Dhabi and Doha.-AFP
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