All aboard Rio’s new metro as 2016 Olympics kick off in Brazil

As the Rio 2016 Olympic Games begin today, sports fans will be able to take advantage of the city’s new metro line.

The Brazilian interim president Michel Temer last week inaugurated the line that runs from Barra da Tijuca, the neighborhood that is home to most of the Olympic venues, to the city’s southern tourist zone.

The new Line 4, built by Concessionaria Rio Barra as part of a public-private partnership, stretches for 16km from Barra to the emblematic neighbourhood of Ipanema, has six stations and is expected to provide service to more than 300,000 people when it commences normal operations on September 19.

For now, it will only be available for use by fans with tickets to Olympic events scheduled for the same day they are riding the metro.

The metro-line project was built at a cost of 9.7 billion reais (Dh11.01bn), with the Rio de Janeiro state government providing 8.5bn reais of the total and the rest coming from Concessionaria Rio Barra, which is made up of the Brazilian engineering companies Queiroz Galvao, Odebrecht and Carioco Engenharia.

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