By Peter Feuilherade
The Middle East and North Africa is emerging as one of the
fastest growing rail markets in the world. Major railway projects planned or
under construction in the region during this decade are currently valued at around
$160 billion. The growth of rail is seen as a major step in transforming
economic development and trade by cutting freight delivery times and reducing
road congestion.
This article was first
published in The Middle East magazine, April 2013.
Until recently the region had one of the lowest density rail
networks in the world, with most passengers and freight moving around by road,
air or sea. In the century since sections of the Turkish-built Hejaz Railway from
Damascus to Medina were damaged during World War I, railway development in the
Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf has been overlooked because cheap fuel prices
ensured that cars and trucks remained the favoured mode of transport for
passengers and freight.
Only now is MENA emerging as one of the fastest growing rail
markets in the world. The growth of rail is seen as a major step in
transforming economic development and trade by cutting freight delivery times
and reducing road congestion.
The highest growth rates are predicted in the GCC countries,
which have ambitious plans to connect individual networks that they are
currently building into a pan-Gulf railway grid which would link to the rest of
the Middle East and ultimately via Turkey to Europe, and also potentially to Central
Asia.
Qatari railways chief Saad Al Muhannadi said at the Middle East Rail conference in
Dubai in February 2013 that an integrated rail link between the Gulf and Europe
could be ready within five years, “but this will depend on the decisions made
by heads of state and economic conditions in the countries involved” – and
presumably also on the outcome of the conflict in Syria, with its rail links to
the north with Turkey. A GCC Railways Authority may also be created by 2014 to
coordinate the individual national projects.
The region’s major economies have each earmarked dozens of
billions of dollars for infrastructure projects ranging from major mainline
ventures in Iran ($34 billion), Saudi Arabia (over $30 billion) and the UAE,
Kuwait and Qatar ($13 to 14 billion each) to more modest national projects.
High-speed passenger rail services are planned in Morocco and Iran. Egypt, the
UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, among others, are also pressing on with metro/light
rail projects aimed at delivering efficient public transport that can help ease
traffic congestion and air pollution in urban areas.
The sector offers a wealth of opportunities for international
engineering, construction, rolling stock and communication companies and
consultancies across much of the MENA region.
Main
projects
Large-scale rail projects across the MENA region are expected
to add another 35,000 km of network in the next five years. According to Dr
Amjad Bangash, head of rail for the global construction giant Bechtel, the region's
mainline rail network is set to almost double in size over the coming decades,
while metro, tram and monorail track lengths will increase tenfold.
Saudi Arabia has three major projects under way.
The North-South Railway, a passenger and freight rail line from the capital Riyadh
in the north-west to Al Haditha near the border with Jordan, is reported to be
the world’s largest railway construction project under development today.
Another key project is the $7 billion Saudi Land Bridge, running
from Dammam to Jeddah via Riyadh. This will be the first rail link between the
Red Sea and the Gulf, and will cut the time taken to transfer containers
between the two ports to 18 hours, compared with a sea voyage of between five
to seven days. The project is reported to be going ahead despite a decade of
delays and financial issues over privatization.
The Haramain high-speed rail link running for 450 km between
Mecca and Medina is Saudi Arabia’s most important passenger transport project.
When completed, it is expected to carry 10 million pilgrims and visitors between
the holy sites each year. Projects are also under way to build light rail/metro
systems to ease congestion in heavily populated cities including Riyadh, Mecca
and Jeddah.
The UAE, the
second-largest economy in the GCC after Saudi Arabia, triggered the regional
rail revolution with its Dubai Metro project, whose first line opened in 2009.
Dubai Metro, the Middle East's first driverless metro system, carried 367
million passengers in 2012. The UAE’s focus is now on Etihad Rail, a 1,200-km
network which will be expanded in three phases across the seven emirates, with
completion expected in 2018. Eventually the network will form part of a
regional GCC railway grid, connecting the UAE to Saudi Arabia via Ghweifat in
the west and Oman via Al Ain in the east, with freight trains running at up to
120 kph and passenger trains at speeds of up to 200 kph.
Dubai Metro (Photo: DubaiMetro.eu)
Qatar, meanwhile, as part of expanding its
infrastructure to host the Football World Cup in 2022, has committed to
building a $35 billion national network comprising a four-line metro system, a
light rail system and heavy rail lines for freight and passengers. The first
phase of the new Doha Metro system is set to be commissioned by 2019 and will
comprise 60% of the total network – 151 km and 48 stations. Qatari railways
chief Saad Al Muhannadi estimates rail-related project returns for investors in
Qatar over the next 20 years at about $38 billion.
Oman’s planned national rail network is set
to receive a major share of the sultanate’s 2013 funding boost for public
transport. A $15 billion system comprising over 1,000 km of dual track is
proposed to connect industrial production centres in Sohar, Duqm and Salalah
and carry large volumes of bulky cargo, especially minerals. There are also
plans to build a metro system in the capital, Muscat.
Iraq’s rail network, opened almost 100
years ago, is now widely run-down after decades of disrepair, war and invasion,
although several lines are still in use from Baghdad to Mosul, Samarra and
Fallujah, among others. Upgrading the network and restoring other lines are
priorities in the government’s reconstruction efforts, although specific
funding on a large scale has yet to be committed.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, Iran says it is adding 11,000
km to its railway network and plans to launch express freight services on the
Tehran-Mashhad route. Jordan, however, bucked the trend for expansion by
deciding in November 2012 to halt any new land acquisition for the National
Railway Project until the country’s financial situation became clearer.
There are several large rail projects under way in North Africa too, although the sums
involved are more modest than in the GCC. Morocco’s Casablanca-Tangier
high-speed rail link is going ahead at an estimated cost of around $3 billion.
Algeria is planning to spend $600 million on fast rail services. And several
metro and tram systems are planned in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria.
Casablanca's new 31-km tram system launched in December 2012 and the Algiers
metro, which finally opened in 2011 after over 20 years of construction delays,
has three extensions in progress.
Morocco's Casablanca-Tangier TGV (Photo: Global Arab Network)
Egypt, beset by a spate of railway
accidents that claimed dozens of lives, pledged at the start of 2013 to invest
hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrading the inadequate rail infrastructure
to stop more disasters. Other plans include a new electric railway system from
Alexandria to Cairo and a line from Beni Suef to Asyut, both funded by the
World Bank, and a new metro extension in Cairo with a loan from the EU and
France.
Advantages
High-speed rail services will reduce journey times
substantially. The Jeddah-Riyadh link is expected to slash passengers’ journeys
to six hours instead of the current 10 to 12 hours by bus. But freight markets
are the key drivers for the development of Middle East rail networks,
especially in the GCC countries. According to Bechtel’s Amjad Bangash, studies have
shown that trains carry freight with nearly 10 times the energy efficiency of
trucks.
“Rail freight is particularly attractive across long
distances… Centuries ago, the Silk Route connected trade routes into an
extensive transcontinental network. In the same spirit, the development of the
GCC network could have a transformational effect on international trade and
commerce in the region,” he believes.
Graeme Overall, business development director of Etihad Rail,
maintains that in addition to economic growth and diversification, which are “the
key drivers for building a national freight network in the UAE,” moving bulk
freight by train will benefit the environment by reducing the energy-intensive
high impact use of road transport, while alleviating congestion will improve
road safety.
Challenges
Building MENA rail networks involves numerous challenges, many
of them specific to the region’s climatic conditions and environment. Geoff
Leffek, regional rail director at Hyder Consulting, in an interview with the
Dubai-based Construction Week
website, listed the biggest issues as “sand and dust, particularly build-up on
rails; patronage forecasting, as ridership forecasting is challenging in places
with little or no existing public transport; energy demand, because power
requirements have not always been tied up with utility providers; and climatic
conditions such as temperature extremes, humidity, harsh sunlight, etc…”
Building lines that would allow train speeds of over 300 kph,
achieved by the French TGV or the Japanese “bullet train”, might not be
technically feasible in the desert where the movement of sand dunes can disrupt
track beds. Engineers from Etihad Rail have looked for solutions from China,
which has used plants that can turn sand dunes to clay over 20 to 30 years, and
Saudi Arabia, which has sand-sucking locomotives that push sand particles away from
the engine.
Persuading people to travel by train in a region where rail
transport has been seen as down-market and unappealing may also be an issue. Colin
Best, editor of the MENA Rail News
business website, told The Middle East
that each country has different reasons for developing its rail infrastructure,
whether to relieve major road congestion in capitals such as Riyadh and Doha,
to cater for professionals in new residential areas such as Lusail in Qatar, or
to transport pilgrims to and from Mecca, “where the influx of visitors is
substantial and the number of buses required has started to become a logistical
nightmare”.
And while public-private partnerships are increasingly
helping to fund the huge costs of GCC rail projects, the credit crunch and its
consequences have diminished the willingness of banks to finance long-term
projects. Not all the rail projects proposed may be able to amass the expected
level of private funding.
Other essentials to building a seamless GCC-wide regional
rail network include developing individual country networks according to
uniform standards and specifications, ensuring interoperability and
streamlining and harmonizing customs procedures.
As David Lupton, transport economist and a former project
manager of the GCC rail feasibility study, told Reuters news agency in October 2012, “a key challenge is
ensuring that the railways being built do actually connect… I get the
impression that national priorities may dominate.”
