EGYPT: Egyptian National Railways has awarded Thales a €109m turnkey contract to design, install and maintain new signalling, telecommunications and centralised traffic control systems for the 208 km Cairo - Alexandria route. Implementation is expected to take four years.
Announcing the contract on May 26, Thales said the route is the busiest section of the Egyptian network, carrying more than 25 million passengers/year. Resignalling would enable maximum speeds to be increased from 140 km/h to 160 km/h and headways cut from 10 min to 5 min, supporting an increase in capacity to 32 million passengers/year.
Michelangelo Neri, Thales Country Director, said the project 'is the first step of the ambitious renovation programme for the signalling system launched by the Ministry of Transport and Egyptian National Railways'.
Thales is currently supplying communications, supervision and fare collection systems for the next phase of the Cairo metro Line 3 project.
