Not to be outdone by the recent spate of monorail building announcements in the Middle East, including a Dh 12.5 billion one in Dubai, Syria has boldly announced that it would supplement its 2,050 km of railroad track with a 9.5 km semicircular monorail in Damascus.
The project, awarded to the Malaysian company Mtrans after a French firm determined that an underground metro would be too costly, will break ground in early 2006.
The final cost: approximately $152 million, or $16 million per km, a far cry from the $50-70 million per km cost of building an underground metro.
“We are very happy about the project and we are going to work very hard to implement it two years after the start date,” explained an ebullient Moussa al Shaar, the deputy minister of transportation.
According to the current plan, Damascus will eventually get three separate monorail lines: A 12km “Green line,” an 11km “Red line” and the 9.5km “Blue Line” which Mtrans will build first.
That line will have 12 stations and will run from the Abbasid square to the Abdel Rahman al-Dakhel square.
Although al Shaar stressed that a pricing strategy had not been determined yet, he suggested that an effort would be made to keep the cost of a ride below $.20.
“At that pricing level we estimate that, in the near term, daily ridership will amount to around 60,000 persons,” he explained. “By 2023 [on the original Blue Line] we would expect ridership to reach 19
Damascene Monorail
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