Muscat, April 28 - The Ministry of Housing will announce six new sites for setting up an integrated gas stations on the Batinah Expressway that will be opened for vehicular traffic from next week. The fuel stations to be set on either sides will come up at locations near Barka, Saham and Liwa through a public bidding. Apart from fuel stations, facilities to be offered on these sites will include a mosque, shopping, a shopping centre, car service centre and a restaurant among others. It may be noted that lack of fuel stations and other facilities for a long time were one of the major concerns of motorists using the Muscat Expressway.
The new road that will be an extension of the Muscat Expressway will help ease traffic, especially the truck movement, on the current Sultan Qaboos Street-Batinah Highway road. The entire stretch of the Batinah Expressway will be open for traffic from May 7, the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC) announced recently. The project involves the construction of around 265 km Expressway, one of the biggest road projects in the country that begins from the start of the Muscat Expressway road all the way to the Oman-UAE border of Khatmat Malaha.
The project was planned to be implemented in two phases with three sections and 11 packages. The first six were main packages and the remaining five were of the interchanges. The first and second section of the carriageway together accounted for a total length of 180 km (packages I, II, III, IV), while the third section covers a total length of 85 km (packages V, VI). The project includes a four-lane roadway stretching from the end of Muscat Expressway near Halban intersection to Khatmat Malaha in Shinas.
Vinod Nair
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