Motorists in Al Waab should prepare for five months of road diversions in front of Villaggio mall starting on Friday, Nov. 11, Qatar Rail said.

A short stretch of the eastbound lanes of Al Waab St., heading toward central Doha, will be closed until Apr. 5, 2017.

Traffic will be re-routed to either one of the westbound lanes, or the adjacent service road that heads to Al Awali St.

The diversions are to enable the construction of a pedestrian underpass for the Doha Metro network’s Al Aziziyah Station on the Gold Line, the rail company said in a statement.

Gold Line

Al Aziziyah will be the end of the 14km-long Gold Line, which runs east-west through Doha to Ras Bu Aboud, near Hamad International Airport.

It will have 11 stops, including at the busy residential districts of Al Waab, Al Sadd and Bin Mahmoud, before passing through the hub station of Msheireb and on to Souq Waqif and the Qatar National Museum.

The route is part of the first phase of the Metro, which is expected to open to the public around late 2019 or early 2020.

By 2021, Qatar Rail forecasts 180,000 passenger trips a day will be made on the Gold line.

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