The Roads & Transport Authority (RTA) has announced that five new metro stations on the Red Line of the Dubai Metro have opened mid-October, bringing the total number of stations opened to 26.  

"Stations to be opened include Business Bay, First Gulf Bank, Sharaf DG, Nakheel and Jumeirah Lake Towers stations, and the remaining three stations will be opened upon completion of real estate and investment projects around them; as they have been especially constructed to serve these projects in which construction works are still underway," said HE Mattar Al Tayer, Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of the RTA.
 
"Through the Metro operating company, RTA has finalised all trial technical tests of the metro; which included testing the communication systems, auto operation systems, power feed, air-conditioning, onboard electronic systems, lighting systems and the integration and coordination between various subsystems and components. RTA has also finalised the training of front-end and customer service employees deployed at the new stations to attend to various systems," he added.
 
HE Al Tayer confirmed that the new stations were ready to receive passengers and that twenty two trains will be deployed during peak time and 16 trains will be in operation during off-peak time, with a service frequency (headway) of 6 minutes during peak time and 8 minutes during off-peak time.

Commenting on the metro ridership HE Al Tayer said: "From 9/9/2009 to 9/9/2010, the Dubai Metro lifted 30.22 million persons and the daily ridership is estimated as 130 thousand passengers."  

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