Metro aims to break new ground in car-mad Qatar
doha — Qatar’s metro, once completed, will run hundreds of kilometres across ultra-modern Doha, along the coast and into its expanding suburbs. But whether car-mad Qataris will actually use it remains an open question.
Driverless three-car trains are to serve 100 stations, easing into gleaming newly-built destinations with names such as Ras Bu Fontas, Al Shaqab and Legtaifiya.
Now the main task for those behind the approximately $18-billion project — in a country where car is king — is to ensure it draws enough passengers to justify the huge outlay. “We are not a culture that is used to the metro, not like Europe,” said Khaled Al Thani, a civil engineer with Qatar Rail, the stateowned company responsible for the metro. “This is all new for us.”
The Doha Metro is a massive venture even by the standards of the energy-rich Gulf emirate where infrastructure mega-projects are commonplace.
Officials at Qatar Rail are cagey about terming it the world’s biggest ongoing engineering project, preferring to call it one of the largest.
Since ground was broken in the summer of 2013, a workforce of 41,000 has been digging, tunnelling and building. Large tracts of land in Doha have been set aside for a network of tunnels and stations.
Metro project set for opening in 20120
Qatar even set a world record for using 21 tunnel boring machines at the same time in November 2015, the highest number ever recorded.
Ninety per cent of the metro will run underground when operational. Qatar Rail says its target is to have completed 70 per cent of the network by the end of 2017, with the opening due in late 2019 or early 2020.
“With metros in other developed countries, when they develop a metro they introduce a new line, but for us in Qatar, we’re introducing a whole network system,” said Khaled Al Thani.
Probably the most symbolic part of the Doha Metro will be a station around 20km north of the capital.
Lusail, the final stop on the Red Line, will serve the $45-billion city emerging from the desert that will be the venue of football’s 2022 World Cup final.
“We are actualising a vision,” said Abdulla Abdul Aziz Al Subai, managing director of Qatar Rail.
The company has begun holding special classes for Doha residents to make them aware of the metro and to encourage them to use it.
“I’m very confident that the metro will be a hit,” said Thani on an upbeat note.