EGYPT: Test running on Cairo’s East Nile Monorail and on two branches of metro Line 3 started on November 5.
East Nile Monorail
Following a site visit on November 16, Minister of Transport Kamel Al-Wazir announced that the East Nile Monorail line will be handed over in April next year.
The 56·5 km line with 22 stations is to link Cairo Stadium on metro Line 3 in Nasr City with Arts & Culture City in the New Administrative Capital, where interchange will be provided with the Capital Train suburban rail line.
A €2·7bn contract to design, build and operate for 30 years two driverless monorail lines serving the Cairo conurbation was awarded to a consortium of then Bombardier Transportation (now Alstom), Orascom Construction and Arab Contractors in August 2019.
The second line in the package, the 42 km long West Nile Line, is under construction between October 6 City and Wadi El Nile station on metro Line 3 in Giza, west of Cairo.
Alstom is supplying 70 four-car Innovia 300 trainsets from its Derby plant for the two monorail lines, the first two vehicles were delivered in September 2021.
Metro Line 3 extension
Al-Wazir said on November 8 that the western extension of metro Line 3 is expected to be operational ‘within a month or two’.
Two branches of the 22·9 km Line 3 are under construction starting from Kit Kat station, adding a total of 13·7 km. A six-station, northwestern extension will run to Rod El-Farag Axis, and a five-station, southwestern extension will reach Cairo University in Giza on metro Line 2.
Of the 11 new stations, five are elevated, four are underground, and two are at street level. Completion of the line is expected to treble ridership to more than 1 million passengers/day.
Alstom designed and supplied the Urbalis signalling, telecoms and control systems for the Line 3 extension under a November 2015 contract. It has also supplied the traction power system and depot equipment as part of the G3 Power Supply Consortium. Line 3 is operated by RATP Dev using Hyundai Rotem trainsets.
