Dubai Metro opens five new stations on Red Line Shafaat Ahmed

DUBAI - Exactly at the stroke of 1pm on Friday, Dubai Metro opened the gates of five new stations on the Red Line. Along with that came new weekend timings, increased frequency and reduced duration at each stop.

Business Bay, First Gulf Bank, Sharaf DG, Nakheel and Jumeirah Lakes Towers are the five latest stations to open to the public, taking the number of stations open on the Red Line to 26. "These stations generally support areas that are either commercially busy or moderately populated residential localities, so we are expecting around 15 to 20 thousand more people from these stations," said Ramadan Abdullah, Director of Rail Operations at the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), as he took a ride soon after the opening of the new stations.

Ramadan added that the average daily ridership is likely to increase from the current 130,000 to 150,000.

The stations are expansive, sleek and well served. Though being just the first few hours of opening they weren't too crowded but the staff seemed eager to help. "All the staff are experienced and well trained. We generally deploy our best personnel at new stations and we are happy with the general performance of the system so far since the operations have gone smoothly," he explained.

Around 28 new buses will be serving these stations on three new routes and three merged routes.

According to Ramadan, a survey is being currently undertaken to find out the demand for the remaining three stations, the Jebel Ali, Energy and Jebel Ali Industrial left to be opened on the Red Line.

He said that September had been the best month so far with the punctuality and availability rate of around 99 per cent achieved. With five new stops added to the network, the total journey time has increased by two minutes though the stop durations have been reduced from 30 seconds to 20 seconds. The journey duration on the Rashidiya side would now by one hour three minutes, while on the Jebel Ali side it would one hour two minutes.

While the timings for weekdays will remain the same, trains will run for an additional hour each on Thursday and Friday. On Thursdays the trains will run until 12 midnight whereas on Fridays the operations will start at 1pm.

As many as 22 trains would be serving during peak hours with the frequency of every six minutes, whereas 17 trains would operate during non-peak hours.

Source : Khaleejtimes.com,16 October 2010,
Shafaar Ahmed