SAUDI ARABIA: Riyadh Governor Prince Faisal bin Bandar Al Saud attended a ceremony at the future Qasr Al Hokm Downtown station to mark the completion of tunnelling on Line 3 of the Riyadh metro.
The 41 km Orange Line includes 11 km of tunnels. These have been partly excavated using the cut-and-cover method, with 5·8 km bored using 10 m diameter tunnel boring machine Jazlah supplied by NFM Technologies, which started work in July 2015.
Line 3 is being built by the ArRiyadh New Mobility consortium under a US$5·21bn contract awarded in 2013. Led by Salini Impregilo, the consortium includes Larsen & Toubro and Nesma in the Civil Work Group, and Ansaldo STS and Bombardier Transportation in the Electrical Work Group. Idom and Worley Parsons are also part of the consortium.
In addition to the east-west Line 3, ANM is building Qasr Al Hokm Downtown station, which will provide interchange with the north-south Line 1. The 20 000 m2 station was designed Snøhetta with One Works & Crew.
Line 3 will be the longest of the six lines under construction in the capital. It will have 22 stations and use a fleet of 47 two-car driverless trainsets that Bombardier Transportation is supplying from its Sahagún factory in Mexico. The first of the Innovia 300 trains arrived in Riyadh in November.
