• The first metro line in the capital of Ecuador will be 22 km long and have thirteen new stations, in addition to two stations already built by ACCIONA. 

ACCIONA Infrastructure  and Brazil’s Construtora Norberto Odebrecht have been  awarded a $1,538 million contract (€1,400 million) to build the second phase of Line 1 of the Quito Metro.

The contract, awarded by Quito City Council to a  consortium formed in equal parts by ACCIONA and Odebrecht, includes the construction of a 22,072-metre-long tunnel, 13 new  stations, carriage sheds and workshops, and the railway facilities required for  commissioning. Rolling stock was not included within the scope of the contract.  Nonetheless, equipment and system integration and commissioning will have to be  coordinated between the contractor and the supplier of the rolling stock.

The new metro line  comprises the first component of a new public transport system for Quito. ACCIONA  has already completed the civil works for the stations of La Magdalena and El  Labrador, which were built in phase one of the project, in a contract awarded  to ACCIONA Infrastructure.

Quito’s first  metro line will run  from the Quitumbe bus terminal in the south of the city to El Labrador station  in the north, on the site of an old airport. Construction is expected to take  36 months, with a further six months for systems integration and commissioning.  The stations along the line are Quitumbe, Morán Valverde, Solanda, El  Calzado, El Recreo, La Magdalena, San Francisco, La Alameda, El Ejido,  Universidad Central, La Pradera, La Carolina, Iñaquito, Jipijapa and El Labrador.

Milestones

ACCIONA  forms part of consortia that recently won important contracts for metro works  in São Paulo and Fortaleza, in Brazil: two lots of Line 2 of the Metro de São  Paulo, comprising three stations, totalling 704 million Brazilian reais  (approximately €163 million) and 563 million reais (€130 million euros)  respectively; and the East Line of the Metro de Fortaleza (Metrofor), an  initial project worth 2,300 million reais (€533 million).

ACCIONA also has outstanding experience in complex tunnelling projects.  Earlier this year, ACCIONA inaugurated the international award-winning 4.6 kilometre-long Legacy Way twin tunnels in Brisbane, a project worth AUD$1,500  million (€988 million), in a consortium with Italy’s Ghella and Australia’s BMD Group. 

And in March of this year, the Norwegian National Rail  Administration signed a contract for 8,700 million Norwegian crowns (€1,000  million) with a consortium also comprising ACCIONA and Ghella, for the design  and construction of 20 km twin railway tunnels for the Follo Line Project – Norway’s largest infrastructure project.

Other outstanding ACCIONA tunnelling works include the railway tunnels  in Bologna (Italy) on the high-speed stretch between Milan and Naples; the  Pajares tunnel, in Asturias - the eighth longest in the world - and the north  tunnel of the M-30 bypass in Madrid.