- The first metro line in the capital of Ecuador will be 22 km long and have thirteen new stations, in addition to two stations already built by ACCIONA.
ACCIONA Infrastructure and Brazil’s Construtora Norberto Odebrecht have been awarded a $1,538 million contract (€1,400 million) to build the second phase of Line 1 of the Quito Metro.
The contract, awarded by Quito City Council to a consortium formed in equal parts by ACCIONA and Odebrecht, includes the construction of a 22,072-metre-long tunnel, 13 new stations, carriage sheds and workshops, and the railway facilities required for commissioning. Rolling stock was not included within the scope of the contract. Nonetheless, equipment and system integration and commissioning will have to be coordinated between the contractor and the supplier of the rolling stock.
The new metro line comprises the first component of a new public transport system for Quito. ACCIONA has already completed the civil works for the stations of La Magdalena and El Labrador, which were built in phase one of the project, in a contract awarded to ACCIONA Infrastructure.
Quito’s first metro line will run from the Quitumbe bus terminal in the south of the city to El Labrador station in the north, on the site of an old airport. Construction is expected to take 36 months, with a further six months for systems integration and commissioning. The stations along the line are Quitumbe, Morán Valverde, Solanda, El Calzado, El Recreo, La Magdalena, San Francisco, La Alameda, El Ejido, Universidad Central, La Pradera, La Carolina, Iñaquito, Jipijapa and El Labrador.
Milestones
ACCIONA forms part of consortia that recently won important contracts for metro works in São Paulo and Fortaleza, in Brazil: two lots of Line 2 of the Metro de São Paulo, comprising three stations, totalling 704 million Brazilian reais (approximately €163 million) and 563 million reais (€130 million euros) respectively; and the East Line of the Metro de Fortaleza (Metrofor), an initial project worth 2,300 million reais (€533 million).
ACCIONA also has outstanding experience in complex tunnelling projects. Earlier this year, ACCIONA inaugurated the international award-winning 4.6 kilometre-long Legacy Way twin tunnels in Brisbane, a project worth AUD$1,500 million (€988 million), in a consortium with Italy’s Ghella and Australia’s BMD Group.
And in March of this year, the Norwegian National Rail Administration signed a contract for 8,700 million Norwegian crowns (€1,000 million) with a consortium also comprising ACCIONA and Ghella, for the design and construction of 20 km twin railway tunnels for the Follo Line Project – Norway’s largest infrastructure project.
Other outstanding ACCIONA tunnelling works include the railway tunnels in Bologna (Italy) on the high-speed stretch between Milan and Naples; the Pajares tunnel, in Asturias - the eighth longest in the world - and the north tunnel of the M-30 bypass in Madrid.