The construction of the Light Rail Transit (LRT) station at Barra was completed last month, the Public Works Bureau (DSOP) has announced on its website.
The Barra station will enable the LRT Taipa section to link up with the Macau peninsula.
Secretary for Transport and Public Works Raimundo do Rosário told lawmakers late last year that with the project of building the LRT Barra station to be completed in 2023, the government aimed for the LRT section connecting Taipa and Barra at the southernmost tip of the peninsula – via Sai Van Bridge – to come into service at the end of 2023 or the beginning of 2024.
Currently, the LRT only operates on the 9.3-kilometre-long Taipa section which includes Cotai. The Taipa-Cotai section, which started operating on December 10, 2019, has 11 stations.
The first LRT section that will connect Taipa and the peninsula will run from the Ocean station, the western terminus of the LRT Taipa section, to the south-western tip of the peninsula near A-Ma Temple. The LRT Ocean station is located near Ocean Gardens. The LRT Taipa-Barra section will run through the lower enclosed deck of the Macau-Taipa Sai Van Bridge.
The government commissioned China Construction and Engineering (Macau) Company Limited in August 2018 to carry out the LRT Barra station project, which was then initially scheduled to be completed in November 2022. However, the project was subsequently slated to be completed this month after it had been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and adverse weather conditions.
The Public Works Bureau announced on its website on Wednesday that the LRT Barra station was completed last month.
According to the DSOP website, the LRT Barra station cost 1.178 billion patacas.
Two LRT projects are currently underway in Macau, namely the Seac Pai Van section and the Hengqin section.
The 1.6-kilometre-long Seac Pai Van section will connect the LRT Taipa section near the future Cotai hospital complex and the sprawling Seac Pai Van public housing estate in Coloane. According to the DSOP website, the Seac Pai Van LRT project, which got off the ground in September 2021, is now scheduled to be completed in February next year.
The 2.2-kilometre-long Hengqin section will connect Macau’s Cotai and Zhuhai’s Hengqin Island. The LRT Cotai-Hengqin section project, which got off the ground in March 2021, is scheduled to be completed in September next year.
Moreover, the LRT East Line construction project is now expected to get off the ground in the second half of this year. The 7.7-kilometre-long LRT East Line will connect the Barrier Gate border checkpoint and the Taipa Ferry Terminal in Pac On via the Zone A and Zone E1 land reclamation areas. The East Line will cross the sea between Zone A and Zone E1 through an undersea tunnel.
The government said last year that the LRT East Line project is slated to be completed in 2028.
LRT logs average of 4,750 passengers daily last month, highest since COVID-19 pandemic
Meanwhile, the LRT, which currently only covers Taipa and Cotai, had an average of 4,750 passengers daily last month, the highest since the COVID-19 pandemic began to affect Macau in early 2020.
Macau confirmed its first novel coronavirus case on January 22, 2020.
The 4,750 LRT passengers per day on average recorded last month was also the first time that the daily average number of LRT passengers in a month exceeded the 4,000 benchmark since the start of the pandemic.
This came after an average of 3,550 LRT passengers daily was recorded in January, the then highest since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The government-owned LRT operator, Macau Light Rapid Transit Corporation Limited (MLM), announced last month’s average daily number of LRT passengers on its website yesterday.
The number of LRT passengers had fallen drastically due to declining tourist numbers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, after the system recorded an average daily number of passengers of 33,000 and 16,000 in December 2019 and January 2020 respectively.
Before January this year, the daily average number of LRT passengers had been lower than 2,000, since the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the MLM website, except in January 2020 when an average of 16,000 passengers daily was recorded, the LRT recorded an average daily number of passengers of 1,691 during the other 11 months in 2020.
The LRT had an average of 1,989 passengers daily in 2021, while the figure dropped to 1,850 last year.
Before January this year, the LRT recorded the highest average daily number of passengers of 2,600, in July 2021 and October last year, since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The two handout photos taken from the Public Works Bureau’s (DSOP) website yesterday show the completed Light Rail Transit (LRT) Barra station and its ticket lobby last month.
