Nigeria’s federal government will support the $2.4 billion Lagos Red Line Rail Project.
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Work to Begin on Second Line for Lagos
The Nigerian federal government has given the go-ahead for Lagos State to begin work on the second line of a planned seven-line light-rail transit system for the country’s largest city and principal port.
Negotiations for federal support of the $2.4 billion Lagos Red Line Rail Project took eight years to complete, Naija247News reports. The state government began work on the first line, the Blue Line, without federal assistance; construction of that line began in 2010 and is set to wrap up by the end of next year. Lagos State Commissioner for Transportation Dayo Mobereola said that the Blue Line project was the only urban rail transit project in the world to have been built with no support from the national government.
The delay in getting federal approval for the Red Line was partly due to protracted negotiations over the line’s right-of-way, which it will share with its owner, the Nigerian Railway Corporation.
The line will run from Marina station in central Lagos to Agbado in neighboring Ogun State, with a branch serving Lagos’ airport. It will share tracks with the east-west Blue Line from Marina to the Lagos Harbor crossing before turning north.
No completion date has yet been announced for the Red Line, which is probably just as well, given that the Blue Line was to have been completed by the end of 2015.
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