HE Mattar Al Tayer, Director General and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), announced the completion of 30% of the first contract for the improvement of Airport Street involving the construction of Rashidiya and Casablanca interchanges. The completion rate has reached 25% in other contract covering Nad Al Hamar and Marrakech interchanges.
Al Tayer made this statement during an inspection visit to the Airport Street Interchanges Improvement Project costing AED404 million. During the tour, Al Tayer was accompanied by Engineer Maitha bin Adai, CEO of Traffic & Roads Agency, Engineer Nabeel Mohammed Saleh, Director of Roads as well as several directors and engineers of the Agency.
Traffic Diversions
“RTA has charted out a comprehensive plan for traffic diversions to ensure a smooth traffic flow. It has diverted traffic in both directions of Rashidiya Street, and work is currently progressing in bridge works and the shifting of the existing utility lines. The work area has been fully separated by a high barrier to muffle the noise as much as possible from disturbing road users and residents of nearby areas. The traffic will be diverted at Marrakech and Casablanca intersections by the end of this month, and the contractor is currently working on bridges at the intersections of Nad Al Hamar, Marrakech and Casablanca in concurrence with the shifting of utility lines. The RTA is always keen to ensure that the design of the temporary diversion is identical to the design of permanent roads in terms engineering design, and levels of the surface and the asphalt, and the provision of sufficient lighting matching to the designed road speed to ensure the safety of users. The diversion maintains the same number of lanes to ensure a smooth traffic flow without negatively impacting the traffic volumes to avoid any snarls,” stated Al Tayer.
He stressed the importance of continuously reviewing, monitoring and evaluating traffic diversions to avoid traffic congestions during the project, which serves Dubai Airport, and several other hotspots in the downtown area. He directed to increase the number of engineers, supervisors and workers to step up the work progress and ensure timely completion of the project.
“The Airport Road Improvement Project is part of a plan set by the RTA for accommodating the projected growth in the number of passengers using the Dubai International Airport which is expected to shoot to 92 million passengers by 2020. Thus the traffic study highlighted the importance of finalizing the improvement of the Airport Road by 2017,” continued Al Tayer.
4 Interchanges
“The project comprises the construction of bridges, a tunnel at the intersection of Marrakech, and bridges at the intersection of Rashidiya as well as the intersections of the Airport St. with Casablanca St. and Nad Al Hamar St. It also includes improving at-grade intersections, and constructing a service road of three lanes in each direction to separate the traffic movement from and to Nad Al Hamar St. from the vehicular flow on the Airport Street starting from Rashidiya Intersection up to Marrakech Intersection. The project will contribute to increasing the capacity of the Airport St. by an additional 5000 vehicles per hour. It will also enhance the traffic safety level and reduce the journey time on the Airport St. from Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed St. to Casablanca St. from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. The improvement of Rashidiya Intersection comprises the construction of a bridge on the Airport St. of 3 lanes in each direction, which is expected to slash the waiting time at the interchange from 13 minutes to less than one minute,” commented Al Tayer.
“The upgrading of the Airport St. – Nad Al Hamar St. Intersection encompasses the construction of an additional bridge of two lanes in each direction to serve the traffic coming from Nad Al Hamar St. heading towards the Airport St. The project will ease the current snarls resulting from the overlapping traffic at Nad Al Hamar Intersection between the first circular slope heading to the left, from Nad Al Hamar St to the Airport St. It will also ease the traffic movement on the second circular slope heading left, from the Airport St. to Nad Al Hamar St. Vehicular traffic on the first circular slope will be restricted to U-turns in the direction of Nad Al Hamar St.,” elaborated Al Tayer.
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