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Capital to have 3 new tunnels

The project will take four years to complete and is aimed at easing traffic jams in Abu Dhabi city. The three tunnels will span 3,200 metres in their entirety. Extending about 1,100 metres, the first tunnel, which starts from the Mina Street-Salaam Street Intersection and passes underneath Hamdan-Zayed 1st streets’ crossroad, is the longest of all three tunnels.

Each tunnel will be built to the world’s highest engineering standards and will have three lanes on each side. The other two tunnels spanning 740 metres will pass beneath intersections of Al Falah Street and Hazza bin Zayed Street and the length of the low roads is 650 meters separate pedestrian pavements have been designed on each direction for use in cases of emergency and maintenance. Emergency telephones will be fixed in close proximity to each telephone point.

“Traffic on the surface of the tunnels will be low as these tunnels are expected to substantially reduce traffic bottlenecks at intersections with traffic lights," said Fatima Al Jaber, Acting Assistant Under-Secretary for building and road sectors at the department.

She said the second tunnel would be located at Street 31-Salaam Street Intersection and will have four lanes on each side.

According to Abdullah Al Katheeri, Director of Roads at Abu Dhabi Municipality, preliminary surveys conducted at the designing stage show that traffic along Al Salaam Street will flow unabated through six most jammed intersections of the city. However, the street will remain open to traffic along three lanes at least on each direction via thoroughly designed detour. Traffic at intersected roads, Katheeri added, will run smoothly all the time as usual.

• UAE