Egypt has signed a major contract to modernize its rail network. Under the leadership of the German group Siemens, it is a consortium made up of Siemens Mobility as well as its partners Orascom Construction and The Arab Contractors which will take care of the modernization of its High Speed Train network. For a pharaonic amount of 8.1 billion euros.
For Siemens and its consortium partners, it will involve building three railway lines to interconnect 60 cities between northern and southern Egypt. Speaking on this occasion in a statement made public on May 28, Roland Busch, CEO of Siemens said: “This is the largest order in the history of Siemens! (…) Egypt will have the sixth largest and most modern high-speed rail network in the world”.
For President Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi of Egypt, this modernization of the railway network will mark a new era in the country, especially in the field of rail transport in that the new network is electrified and will qualitatively improve people's mobility. .
Siemens Mobility announced that: “The Egyptian high-speed network will consist of three lines. One called "the Suez Canal on Rails" is a 660 km line linking the port cities of Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea to Marsa Matruh and Alexandria on the Mediterranean. The second line will be around 1,100 km long and will connect Cairo to Abu Simbel near the Sudanese border, linking the megacity to emerging economic centers in the south. The third line will cover approximately 225 km and will connect the World Heritage archaeological sites of Luxor to Hurghada on the shores of the Red Sea”. It is estimated that up to 40,000 local jobs will be generated by this 8.1 billion euro contract.
This “turnkey” contract involves Siemens Mobility supplying the trainsets: 41 Velaro eight-car high-speed trains, 94 Desiro high-capacity four-car regional trains, 41 Vectron freight locomotives.
In addition to building and modernizing the Egyptian infrastructure, in this case 2,000 kilometers of railways, the consortium will have to take care of its maintenance for a period of 15 years. The trains which will thus be made available to the country should link the North and the South of the country with a speed of up to 230 km/h.
By Abdul Yazid
