Dubai to open new tunnel from Airport Street to ease school traffic

Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) will open a two-lane tunnel linking the Airport Street and Marrakech Street on Friday, July 20.

The tunnel is hoped to improve traffic flow from Airport Street to Marrakech Street in a densely populated district which has several schools, public and private entities, the RTA said in a statement.

The new route is part of ‘Improvement of Airport-Marrakech Streets Junction’ project.

The project included the construction of two bridges with three lanes in each direction on Airport Street, and a ramp that leads to Dubai International Airport Terminal 3, bypassing the signal.

It also included the construction of another bridge leading to the premises of the Dubai Aviation Engineering projects.

“The overall project cuts the waiting time at the junction from seven minutes to less than a minute,” said Nabeel Mohammed Salih, director of Roads at RTA’s Traffic and Roads Agency.

The RTA opened all the bridges at the four junctions of the Airport Street including the Al Rashidiya junction, the Airport-Nad Al Hamar streets junction,the Marrakech-Airport streets’ junction and Airport-Casablanca Streets junction over several phases.

The project at the Airport-Casablanca Streets junction saw the construction of an additional single-lane ramp to serve the traffic from the Airport Street heading to Casablanca Street as well as the construction of an alternative street for traffic inbound from Al Garhoud enabling direct access to Terminal 1 and 3 of the Airport.

“The project has considerably reduced the total waiting time at Casablanca junction and eased tailbacks generated by the overlapping traffic between vehicles heading towards Casablanca junction and others coming from Terminal 1 heading leftwards to Casablanca Street,” added Salih.

The wider Airport Street improvement project is part of the RTA’s plan to cater to the growth in the number of passengers at Dubai International Airport – expected to hit 92 million by 2020.

Upon completion, the project is anticipated to increase the capacity of Airport Street by up to 5,000 additional vehicles per hour.

“It will also boost the traffic safety level, and cut short the transit time on Airport Street,” the RTA said.

Dubai International, the world’s busiest airport for international travellers, recorded a 5.5 per cent growth in passenger traffic last year to reach 88.2 million. It is forecasting traffic to increase by 2.4 per cent this year to 90.3 million.

Read more: Dubai airport predicts rise in traffic after 2017 growth dips