Sanwo-Olu’s Promise To Complete Red Line Rail Before End Of May, Still On Course – Aide

The promise by the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, that the Red Line rail would be completed before the end of his first tenure is still on course, the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Gboyega Akosile, told THE WHISTLER on Monday…..CONTINUE READING...CONTINUE READING

Sanwo-Olu who will be completing his first tenure on May 29, had in March while speaking with journalists after an inspection tour of the Red Line rail and the vehicular overpass bridges at Yaba and Oyingbo train stations, pledged to complete the project before the end of his first tenure.

Upon completion, the Red Line rail is expected to move 500,000 passengers daily.

This translates to 3.5 million passengers weekly and 15 million passengers a month.

The project has five vehicular overpass bridges, including Oyingbo, Yaba, Mushin to Onipanu, and Ikeja. This is intended to forestall train-vehicle accidents and reduce travel time for Lagosians.

“We believe we are still on track. We believe it should be ready before the end of our first term depending on when we want to commission it. We will be doing a lot of testing, and signalization because these road tracks will also be working with the Nigerian Railway Corporation, operating a train from Ebute-Meta in Lagos to Ibadan. We need to be able to harmonize a lot of signalization between our rail infrastructure and the Nigerian Railway Corporation rail infrastructure.

“All the vehicular overpass bridges are very important because of the unfortunate train and bus accident that we saw a few weeks ago at Shogunle. So all these bridges we are building, apart from the fact that they are full vehicular bridges, are also to stop trains, vehicles, and passengers needing to interact. The highest grade of ensuring that you completely remove any contact with rail is when you build a complete alternative mode of transportation for passengers, pedestrians, and vehicles,” the governor had said.

According to Akosile, the state government is so determined to complete the project before the end of this month.

“Red Line is still on course. We are working very hard to ensure that it’s complete(d) before the end of this month,” he said.

Akosile, however, noted that that is barring any unforeseen circumstances. “Because it’s the contractor that will tell us that it’s complete, it’s not complete,” he pointed out.

Checks by our correspondent on Monday, showed that the Ikeja overpass bridge as well as the Ikeja Train Station look 99 percent completed by the contractor, CCECC.

The Red Line rail is one of the seven lines proposed by Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA), in line with the state’s mass transit agenda.

Other lines are the Blue, Green, Yellow, Purple, Brown and Orange. The Blue Line was commissioned by President Muhammadu Buhari in January.

Touching on the Blue Line, Akosile aveered that the reason why commercial operation is yet to commence on the line, is because LAMATA is doing test-runs and carrying out safety checks…..CONTINUE READING