The major tender for the Purple and Green lines of the Greater Tel Aviv metropolitan area light rail system is underway. NTA Metropolitan Mass Transit System Ltd., which is responsible for construction of the mass transit network in metropolitan Tel Aviv, today announced its intention of issuing a tender for the purchase of rolling stock, systems, and maintenance for the new lines. The company's tenders committee will publish the preliminary selection documents for the tender tomorrow, after these were approved by the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Finance.
According to NTA, the NIS 15 billion tender will utilize the public-private partnership (PPP) method. The tender was written in consultation with professional staff at the Ministry of Transport and the Accountant General department in the Ministry of Finance. Tenders will also be published gradually in the coming months for civil engineering work and infrastructure in the project.
The Green Line will connect Holon and Rishon Lezion with central Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv University, the industrial zone in west Herzliya, and the Kiryat Atidim high-tech zone. The line will be 39 kilometers long, including four kilometers underground, and will have 62 stations.
The Purple Line will connect Kiryat Ono and Yehud to central Tel Aviv via Bar Ilan University, the Sheba Medical Center, and the Carmel open-air market. The line will be 29 kilometers long, at ground level, and will have 45 stations.
The government has allocated NIS 30 billion for the two lines. Detailed planning on the lines is currently taking place, with actual construction scheduled to start towards the end of this year.
NTA CEO Yehuda Bar On said, "Simultaneously with progress on the Red Line, we are preparing to build two more lines in order to create a network of advanced top-standard transportation serving half a million residents a day as soon as possible."
Minister of Transport and Intelligence Yisrael Katz said that the Tel Aviv light rail project was the Ministry of Transport's largest transportation development taking place today. "After 100 years of vision and 60 years of unfulfilled promises, I set in motion the Greater Tel Aviv metropolitan light railway project. Work on the construction of the Red Line is on schedule and the next stage, which is about to begin, will guarantee an advanced mass transit system in Tel Aviv and the surrounding area that will make it possible to forego the use of private cars at peak times, as is the practice all over the world."
The two additional lines, the Green Line and the Purple Line, together with the Red Line currently being built and scheduled for inauguration in late 2021, will fundamentally change the transportation situation in metropolitan Tel Aviv. "Many people have signed declarations and plans. Many of them laid cornerstones. We are actually doing it. The situation throughout Greater Tel Aviv in another few years will be and look different," Katz concluded.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 11, 2018
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