UK-headquartered Turner & Townsend will lead a team of WSP, Mace and PwC in delivering Ireland’s first metro in Dublin.

MetroLink will be a high-capacity railway running north-south, mostly underground, for 18.8km. Its 16 stations will include termini at Swords in the north and Charlemont in the south.

With 30 station departures an hour, the system is projected to carry up to 50 million passengers a year and will integrate with existing transit services in the capital.

The client is Transport Infrastructure Ireland. It said building the metro would create 8,000 construction jobs.

Irish consulting engineer O’Connor Sutton Cronin supported WSP.

As “client partner”, the team will be responsible for the design, procurement, and construction phase.

Turner & Townsend has acted as commercial adviser on the programme since 2018.

Aidan Foley, the project’s director for Transport Infrastructure Ireland, said the use of the NEC4 professional services contract to engage the client partner represented “a real opportunity to work collaboratively and productively towards achieving our shared project goals”.

“Major programmes like MetroLink offer a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the way people travel across the capital, connecting communities both inside and outside Dublin with an efficient, low carbon public transport service,” said Gary Easton, Turner & Townsend’s infrastructure lead for Europe.