Algiers Metro Operational After 3 Long Lasting Decades

Algiers congested with cars and buses has finally got an underground subway system, three decades after the first tunnel was dug.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has inaugurated Monday the single 9.5-kilometer line, which started yet operating its 11 trains.

Algiers Metro is run by a subsidiary of RATP, the authority of the widely envied Paris Metro, called RATP-Al-Djazair.

The Associated Press news agency has quoted a police official involved in the Metro’s security as saying that 400 police specially trained in France will be on duty for the system, which is equipped with 244 video cameras and explosives detectors.

The Metro, to operate from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., is expected to transport some 25,000 people per hour each way during high traffic hours.

The underground line is expected to widen to 40 km as by 2020, to reach Dar El Beida in the eastern outskirts of the capital, and Draria in the west of the capital.