Nakheel and SMRT Engineering Pte Ltd (SMRTE) have signed a contract for the operation of the Palm Monorail.

The contract will see SMRTE take responsibility for the day-to-day running of the service including ticketing, on-going maintenance, and operation of the monorail’s stations.

The monorail is now well into its final testing phases and will open to the public in April this year.

The Palm Monorail is the first monorail to be constructed in the Middle East and it is being developed by a consortium of leading international companies led by the Marubeni Corporation.

The monorail is a Hitachi-based system with 5.45km fully elevated, double tracked system with four stations.

The Palm Monorail project is fully automatic and driverless, although an attendant will be on board at all times.

The monorail will initially carry up to 2,400 passengers per hour per direction in four separate trains, each made up of three cars. At full capacity, the figure will rise to a maximum of 6,000 people in nine vehicles.-TradeArabia News Service