Lagos Red Line Rail Transport Ready For Inauguration — Sanwo-Olu

Cautions residents against carrying out commercial activities on tracks

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State, yesterday, said plans have been concluded for the inauguration of the 37-kilometre Red Line rail project.

Sanwo-Olu spoke while conducting the final test run of the brand new trains to be inaugurated by President President Bola Tinubu on Thursday.

The governor, who arrived the Ikeja train station for the test run with his deputy, Dr. Femi Hamzat, and other key officials, also warned residents to stay off the rail tracks.

He added that a track was not a place to reside or carry out commercial activities.

Speaking to newsmen after the tour which ended at Iju station, Sanwo-Olu said: “This is our final inspection at the Ikeja train station and we just finished another test train ride on the Red Line, using one of the trains. We have had a journey all the way to Iju and back. We still have a few cleanings to do in the trains because they still have wrappers around them.

“We will continue to test the air conditioning, which is working, even though they all came from different climatic weathers. Other than that, it is the challenge around pedestrians on the track and the kind of wrong things we saw on those tracks. We will continue to do the enforcement.

“We will continue to do physical barricades on those lines and work with the Nigeria Railway Corporation NRC. However, this message is for our citizens living virtually on the track: a track is not a place of residence or commercial activities. While we continue to tell people to stay off it, we will continue to enforce it and ensure that we clear the tracks because we do not want to record any fatality.”

“Once the intra train starts, it is not every two hours or three hours; it’s going to be fairly regular – 10 minutes, 15 minutes. We don’t want them to be comfortable that they have to stay on the track. It’s not a place for people to stay. That is the major challenge, we have reduced it considerably in the last two months and we will not stop. Other than that, I think the stations are ready, the trains are ready.”