Qatar to spend $40 billion on metro and railway projects

Qatar will spend $40 billion (150 billion riyals) on three railway projects as part of an integrated Gulf plan worth $200 billion in total, al-Bawaba.net reported.

“The net cost for the three projects amounts to 150 billion riyals, which includes metro, railway projects, Wasel and Western Gulf projects” said Saad al-Mhandi, the chief executive of Qatar’s railway company, known as RAIL.

“The Wasel project is a light-passenger train which connects Wasel cities with each other. The Western Gulf project will link the Western Gulf city with Doha. Other metro and rail projects will connect Qatari cities with each other," Mhandi added.

The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2020 an will be a “world benchmark” in rail technology, one of the senior officials involved in the project, CEO of Deutsche Autobahn, Rudiger Grube, told Gulf Times. Deutsche Autobahn is one of the various partners of the metro and railway projects, and is working on integrating the entire rail network.

“I would like to say that this is one of the biggest projects worldwide and it is one of the latest ones,” Grube said. “If this project is realized, then we have a benchmark worldwide ̶ there is no other system which is working on this high-level standard that we have planned here for Qatar.”

Grube added that “we are under real pressure to be on quality, on time and on cost, and we are committed to this.”

According to Mhandi, a delay in tenders for the project will not affect the project’s first phase schedule which will end in 2021.

Qatar hosts the World Cup in 2022.