Inauguration of the Construction of the MRT Line 1, connecting the Airport and the City

Newsdesk: On Thursday, February 2, the Inauguration Ceremony of the Construction Works of the First ever Underground Metro Rail of Bangladesh MRT Line 1 was held. To celebrate this historic event, Honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Mr. Obaidul Quader, Minister for Road Transport and Bridges, Mr. Golam Dastagir Gazi, Minister of Textiles and Jute, Mr. A. B. M. Amin Ullah Nuri, Secretary of Road Transport and Highways Division, Mr. M.A.N. Siddique, Managing Director, DMTCL, Mr. IWAMA Kiminori, Ambassador of Japan to Bangladesh and Mr. ICHIGUCHI Tomohide, Chief Representative of JICA attended the ceremony.

The MRT will be built with Japanese ODA (yen loan). This MRT Line 1, which is the Airport Line, is a symbolic and particularly important line as it connects Kamlapur Station, the central station of Dhaka, with Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, the gateway to the city and where its new terminal is currently under construction with Japanese ODA, in 25 minutes.

The country’s first-ever electric railway will provide safe, rapid, comfortable and punctual mass transit service in Dhaka with various Japanese state-of-the-art technologies. In the future, the MRT Line 1 will be networked with Lines 6 and 5, which is to be completed in 2029.

The development of this MRT route network, a mass transit system, will improve the mobility of people and help alleviate the chronic traffic congestion caused by the rapid population growth in Dhaka. It will also contribute to addressing climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.