EGYPT: National Authority for Tunnels has selected RATP Dev Mobility Cairo to operate and maintain the ‘light rail’ line linking Cairo with 10th Ramadan City and the New Administrative Capital.
Signed at a ceremony on March 3 under the patronage of Transport Minister Kamel Al Wazir, the contract will run for 15 years, with an optional five-year extension. The group had already been selected to operate Cairo Metro Line 3.
Currently expected to open in the fourth quarter of 2021, the electrified line is being developed as part of NAT’s integrated multimodal transport strategy. It is being built by a consortium of China Railway Group and AVIC International under a US$1·24bn contract awarded in August 2017. Last year the contractors selected a joint venture of TSO and Orascom Construction to undertake the tracklaying, awarding a US$112·5m subcontract to be completed by mid-2021. CRRC Qingdao Sifang is supplying a fleet of six-car EMUs which will operate at up to 120 km/h.
The first phase of the project covers 65 route-km and 11 stations. Running largely at-grade, the railway will start from an interchange with Cairo Metro Line 3 at Adly Mansour station, just north of the city’s international airport, and head east alongside the Ismailia Highway for 28·6 km through Shorouk and New Heliopolis City to a junction at Badr City. One 14·6 km branch will run north to serve 10th Ramadan City, while a second would turn south for 30 km, looping around the Regional Ring Road to reach the New Administrative Capital.
Services would initially operate at 12 min headways on each branch, increasing to a planned 5 min interval in the longer term. The line is projected to carry around 340 000 passengers/day when fully operational.
RATP Dev Mobility Cairo anticipates that at last 90% of the staff will be recruited locally, and it plans to establish a dedicated training centre to encourage knowledge transfer, drawing on its experience in other cities such as Doha, Casablanca, Manila, Hong Kong, London and Paris. It has committed to focus on ‘punctuality and regularity, top quality customer service and strong expertise in asset maintenance’.
‘It is a great honour for the RATP group to have been selected by NAT for this exceptional contract’, said Laurence Batlle, President of the RATP Dev Management Board. ‘The Egyptian authorities have an exciting vision for urban transport, and 10 Ramadan – New Administrative Capital is a central part of it. In addition to our mobilisation on Line 3, RATP Dev is committed to providing Egypt with its first-rate technical and human expertise as we deepen our relations with the authorities, our employees and our passengers.’
