The fully electric-powered fleet of Metrolink buses of Karwa (Mowasalat) provided facility to commuters yesterday at Gold Line of Doha Metro.
“Today’s replacement service for the Metro Gold Line: 100% powered by our brand new electric fleet,” Mowasalat said in a tweet yesterday.
Doha Metro had announced earlier that due to an ongoing essential system upgrade across network, Metro services on Gold Line would be replaced with alternative services on March 19 (yesterday) and March 25, 2022.
From Al Aziziyah, M313 and M312 metro links extended to Sport City. From Sport City, replacement buses ran to Ras Bu Abboud every five minutes.
Buses ran to Al Bidda for transfer to/from the green and red line. A shuttle replacement service also ran between Bin Mahmoud and Al Sadd. The Gold Line of Doha Metro covers 11 stations from Ras Bu Abboud all the way to Al Aziziyah. The use of fully electric-powered buses for replacement service reflects gradual materialisation of Ministry of Transport’s plans of shifting of public buses, government school buses and Doha Metro feeder buses to electric buses, thus achieving the percentage that is required to reduce harmful carbon emissions from buses by the year 2030.
These plans will boost Qatar’s ranking as a pioneer in the field of mass transit with clean energy and as the first country in the world to have an integrated electric bus system, in addition to boosting the potential legacy value for the bus system of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.
The strategy targets a shift in 25% of public transit fleet of buses to electric buses by 2022 and the use of electric buses in main services during the FIFA World Cup 2022 to make it the first championship to use electric mass transit buses.
In July last year, ABB had also won a contract to design, supply, test and commission a new high-power charging infrastructure for one of the world’s largest fleet of electric buses. The project will see ABB provide high power charging infrastructure for the fleet, which is expected to have 1,000 electric buses operating across the country and with a capacity to transport 50,000 passengers a day.