THE Saudi Arabian government has awarded contracts worth $22.5 billion to three foreign-led consortia for the design and construction of a metro rail system in the capital Riyadh.

The project, which will involve six rail lines extending 176 km and carrying electric, driverless trains, is the world’s largest public transport system currently under development, Saudi officials said.

Construction will require 600,000 tonnes of steel (80 times the amount used to build the Eiffel Tower) and 4.3 million cu m of concrete (11 times the amount used for Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper), and will employ over 30,000 workers.

The BACS consortium has been appointed by the High Commission for the Development of Arriyadh to design and build two of the rail lines (Lines One and Two) under a $9.45-billion deal; the FAS consortium led by Spain’s Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC) secured a $7.82-billion contract for three lines, while Italy’s Salini Impregilo Group heads a group that won a $6-billion order.

The BACS consortium comprising Bechtel, Almabani, Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) and Siemens will be responsible for the design, construction, rolling stock, signalling, electrification and integration of Line One, which will run north to south across Riyadh from Olaya to Batha corridor and Line Two, which will extend run east to west along King Abdullah Road.

The FAS consortium includes FCC, Freyssinet Saudi Arabia, Alstom and Setec of France, Samsung of Korea, Strukton of the Netherlands, and Typsa of Spain. The consortium will build lines Four (orange), Five (yellow) and Six (purple), which will have 25 stations. The project is to be executed in five years, and will employ 15,000 people. Construction will include 64.6 km of rail track: 29.8 km of viaducts, 26.6 km of underground track, and 8.2 km of overground track. The consortium will use three tunnel boring machines (TBMs) to build tunnels almost 10 m in diameter for the three lines. These lines will use two-car conductorless trainsets supplied by Alstom. There will be four types of stations: elevated, ground level, underground and intermodal to connect with different lines.

Alstom will provide a complete automatic and driverless metro system to equip the three lines. The project also includes also an option for 10 years of maintenance services.

Elaborating on the company’s role on the project, a spokesman for Alstom said: “Alstom will provide Riyadh with its fully integrated metro solution that combines the company’s state-of-the-art metro sub-systems. It includes the rolling stock (69 Metropolis trains), Urbalis signalling, the energy recovery system Hesop, as well as the fast track laying technology Appitrack – a technology that installs tracks three times faster than traditional methods.

“Each train is composed of two cars and is 100 per cent motorised. It is about 36 m long and 2.71-m wide. To minimise delays between trains, the Metropolis trains will be controlled by two operational control centres equipped with the Urbalis driverless system.

“In order to optimise energy consumption, the traction power system will be equipped with Hesop, Alstom’s innovative reversible substation solution, which allows the energy recovered during braking to be re-used by the network.”

The Salini Impregilo Group will execute, as leader of an international consortium which includes Ansaldo STS (Italy), Bombardier (Canada), Larsen & Toubro (India) and the local Saudi company Nesma, Line Three (40.7 km), the longest line of the giant project. About $4.9 billion of the total value of the package will go towards civil works on the contract, according to Salini Impregilo.

Design work on the metro will start immediately and construction will begin in the first quarter of 2014, the government said. The project, to be completed in 2019, is financed by the Saudi Arabian government through the Public Investment Fund.

Saudi Arabia plans to spend about SR3 billion ($800 million) acquiring land in Riyadh to build the metro system, the official in charge of the project told Reuters. “This is already budgeted and we are talking about three billion riyals compensation for the land to be acquired,” said Ibrahim bin Muhammad Al Sultan, president of the Arriyadh Development Authority, the state body handling the project.

Al Sultan said land would be acquired for the metro in 35 locations but he did not expect the purchases to disrupt Riyadh’s real estate market.