Work on Riyadh Metro tunnel to start in 2 months
Saturday 14 February 2015
Work on the tunnel for the first line of the Riyadh Metro is expected to start after two months with the arrival of the spare parts of the tunnel boring machine (TBM) imported from Germany.
“The spare parts for the TBM have arrived. Assembling the TBM takes two months,” said a source whose company works for the Arriyadh Development Authority (ADA).
He made the statement on the heels of complaints from city residents that the $22.5 billion metro project had caused inconveniences to motorists, passengers and businessmen whose shops had lost customers.
He said that a manhole of about 30 meters deep with a diameter of 10 meters or more has been dug at the King Abdulaziz Road.
“From the bottom of the manhole, work on the tunnel will be started. As far as I know, this is the biggest metro project in the world,” he said.
Earlier, Ibrahim A. Al-Hammad, a member of the board of directors of the Saudi Council of Engineers (SCE), said that the project will provide a “safe, efficient and fast” means of public transport.
“However, this poses a stiff technical challenge. This kind of engineering project is being undertaken for the first time. There will be misses and trials,” said Al-Hammad, who also teaches at the King Saud University (KSU).
Equipment will be brought in and the tunnel has to be dug horizontally under the ground. “Although this is a common procedure, the workers could be exposed to risk in the manhole due to failures during construction,” he said.
There are always risks in a project like this, he said and cited China where accidents had taken place in similar projects. This means extra precautions have to be taken for the safety of the workers in the manhole.
“Most of the accidents in engineering projects I have seen took place underground and not above the ground where high-rise buildings have been constructed,” he said.
Work on Riyadh Metro tunnel to start in 2 months | Arab News
Indra wins the biggest ticketing project in the world
January 2015
Indra will implement its contactless ticketing systems, and its access control and cell phone payment solutions in the new public transportation system currently under construction in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. The company strengthens its position in the Middle East and reaches a new milestone in Saudi Arabia's infrastructure market, where Indra is the technological partner of the high-speed railroad project between Medina and Mecca.
Arriyad Development Authority (ADA), the company responsible for modernizing Riyadh's infrastructures, chose Indra's bid at the end of an international public tender involving 10 leading multinational companies. This has been the ticketing contract with the most bids to date; it must be completed in 54 months, and it includes maintenance and technological assistance for 10 years.
Indra will develop the entire advanced pricing management system for the city's public transportation network. This will include a ticketing control center with information from the various systems, financial management software, the operator clearing house, and other value-added systems for commercial management. The project includes systems for 1,000 buses, and access control and ticketing equipment for bus stops and six subway lines (these lines total 175 kilometers and serve about six million users).
Thanks to contactless technology, users will be able to access the entire public transportation system using only one card, which they can validate quickly and easily by placing it near the reader. This solution will also include one-way tickets with a bar code (similar to the tickets for the high-speed service in Spain) and a cell phone payment application that uses NFC (Near Field Communication).
The contract was signed in January in Riyadh by the Governor of Riyadh, Prince Turki Ben Abdualah Ben Abdul Aziz, the Chairman of the High Commission for the Development of Arriyadh, the chairman of the Ministerial High Committee for the Public Transportation project in Riyadh, and Indra's Deputy General Director, Eduardo Bonet.
This subway and bus project in Riyadh is a new addition to Indra's many ticketing accomplishments. The multinational is now a world leader in this sector. Indra's technology has been chosen for the subways in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Santiago de Chile, Medellín, Lisbon, Mumbai, Calcutta and Shanghai, the light rail in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), the suburban railroad in Mexico City, the light rail in Austin (Texas) and the light rail in St. Louis (USA).
Indra and major infrastructures
Indra consolidates its status as a technology partner of the main infrastructure projects across the world such as the Panama Canal or the high-speed railroad line between Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. In the case of the Mecca-Medina railroad, the multinational is responsible for the management, telecom, security, ticketing and ICT systems.
Thanks to its commitment to innovation, Indra has developed its own latest generation solutions for smart transport infrastructures. These can already be found in countries such as the USA, Mexico, Colombia, China, India and Malaysia, among many others.
These smart technologies help to increase the infrastructures' environmental and financial efficiency and sustainability; they also improve service quality and increase security levels.
http://www.indracompany.com/en/prens...ct-world-24104