Kingdom may seek bids for metro construction next year

Bahrain plans to seek bids to build a metro railway system in the fourth quarter of 2019, our sister paper Al Ayam reported on its website yesterday, citing a transport ministry official who estimated the project cost at $1 billion to $2 billion. The government may seek private investments to partially fund the project, Abdul Rahman Al Janahi, an adviser to the transport minister, was quoted by Al Ayam.

The Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunications had earlier released a video on the first phase of the Kingdom’s latest innovative transport solution that will feature a stateof-the-art elevated track that stretches across 30 km, passing through 20 stations and allowing for a capacity of 43K passengers per hour.

Despite spending BD1.5 billion on expanding roads the traffic issue remains more or less the same forcing the Government to come up with Metro Bahrain, Transportation and Telecommunications Minister Kamal Ahmed had said. “Metro Bahrain will address the traffic issue to a great extent. The service will be appealing, especially to the youth.”