UK: At a ceremony in Woolwich on June 13, Mayor of London Ken Livingstone and Transport Minister Karen Buck marked the start of work on the Docklands Light Railway extension from King George V to Woolwich Arsenal.
The 2·5 km extension is to be built by the Woolwich Arsenal Rail Enterprises Ltd joint venture of AMEC and Royal Bank of Scotland, under a 30-year PPP contract announced on June 1. The route is due for completion in early 2009.
WARE has raised total funding of £240m, including a commercial bank facility provided by an RBS-led syndicate and a £100m loan from EIB. AMEC is providing £12m in equity, and has been awarded contracts by WARE to design, build and maintain the extension. AMEC has ordered a 6m diameter ME238SE Series 21800 TBM from Lovat to bore the two parallel 1·3 km tunnels under the River Thames.
AMEC and RBS are already building the extension from Canning Town to London City Airport and King George V, which is due to open by the end of this year.
Transport for London has given approval for DLR Ltd to apply for powers to build a 5 km extension from Canning Town to Stratford International by 2009. Expected to cost £110m, this includes conversion of Network Rail's North London Line between Canning Town and Stratford.
