Commuters on F-Ring Road should schedule in some extra time for their commute this week, as a section of the route will close temporarily starting Monday, Jan. 4, Qatar Rail has said.

The stretch of the road around Air Force Interchange will close in two phases for just over a week in total to enable works on the nearby Red Line Doha Metro project.

The main route, which goes from the junction under Al Mater Street/Al Wakrah Road up to the intersection with Najma Street, will be closed in both directions for five days from Jan 4. until Jan. 8, although service lanes will remain open during this time.

After that, the service route heading from the intersection toward Hamad International Airport (HIA) will be shut for three days from Jan. 9 until Jan. 11, Qatar Rail announced on its website.

“Qatar Rail would like to take this opportunity to apologize for any inconvenience the public may experience due to the road closure and diversion. In the meantime, and in line with the company’s core principle to ‘Keep Doha Moving,’ an alternative route will be provided through the service roads along F-ring road,” the company said in the statement.

The same stretches of road were shut for more than 12 days in November to enable the installation of gantries which are used to construct “viaducts and bridges” of the elevated metro track that will run nearby.

“It is extremely unsafe for any light vehicle to be present while installing the launching gantries at this area and hence the underpass has been closed,” QR said in a statement at the time.

Many motorists were caught unawares by the closure, and there was significant traffic congestion in the area, particularly around peak hours.

Metro works

The Red Line is one of four routes in the Doha Metro network and runs from Al Wakrah through Msheireb and north out of the city by the Golf Club. It also connects with Terminal 1 of HIA and, along with sections of the Green and Gold lines, is expected to start passenger operations in 2019.

There will be 18 stations along the 39km route and Qatar Rail anticipates there will be 280,000 passenger trips on the line by 2021, just ahead of the World Cup.

More than half the route will be underground – 11.3km of the Red Line North section and a further 12.05km of the Red Line South.

A total of 21 custom-built tunnel boring machines have been digging out under Doha since the first one arrived in April 2014 and so far have completed 60 percent of the tunneling works for the entire metro network, QR said last week.

By the time the World Cup is hosted in 2022, a total of 661,000 journeys are expected to be made on the metro, rising to 752,000 by 2026.

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