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RELATED ARTICLES: KEO wins contract for new Riyadh monorail | Monorail breaks ground in Iran | Bahrain seeks monorail finance
Privately owned Canadian consortium Transglobim International (Globim) has been awarded a $600m contract to build Iraq’s first monorail system in Najaf city.
Najaf is Iraq’s second largest city and lies 160kms to the south of capital Bagdad. With a population of 1.2 million (estimate, 2008), Najaf is one of the holiest cities of Shia Islam as it is the home to the shrine of Imam Ali, Prophet Muhammad's martyred son-in-law. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims jam the city’s medieval streets every year to receive rites, and the monorail is designed to ease that congestion.
In comments published in the Kuwait Times, Anwar Al-Haboobi, a member of the Najaf investment committee said the project will be only the second of its kind in the Middle East after Dubai.
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"This project will ease the transport crisis and the clogged streets in the province, especially during the blessed days of rituals," Haboobi said.
The monorail is one of a number of large scale projects discussed by Iraqi officials since the fall of Saddam Hussein, including plans for a multi-billion dollar metro in Baghdad.
Najaf’s monorail system will be 37km long and will link three major mosques in Najaf: Inam Ali, Kufa and Sahla, with two major bus depots. The next phase of the project will link the new Najaf airport, which opened its doors for visitors to the holy city and neighbouring Kerbala in 2008, to the rest of the monorail system, and further expansion of the monorail throughout the city.
Transglobim says the entire project should be completed in 30-36 months. The company says that once survey and design work in complete, the stations and monorail itself will take 24 months to build.
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