Egyptian Transport Minister visits the Cairo-Alexandria line Stations!

The Egyptian Minister of transport, Kamel El Wazir and the President of the Egyptian National Railways (ENR) Ashraf Raslan, visited the progress of the works on the line of Cairo Alexandria and took a tour of the stations that will be put into service soon with Thales technology.

This visit is part of the ambitious programme of the Egyptian railway to modernize the 208km Cairo-Alexandria corridor – Egypt’s busiest line. Thales’ signalling upgrade allows to increase train speeds by 20km/h to 160km/h and to reduce the time interval between trains from 10 minutes to 5, boosting the frequency of services. Harmonisation of signalling technology along the entire Cairo-Alexandria corridor will ensure that ENR masters every decisive moment of the operation of this heavy traffic line.

So far 5 stations have been inaugurated in the project without impacting the daily operations of the line. One more is to be opened by the end of the year and two more for 2020.

The work is progressing well and the Minister showed confidence in the project during his visit.

Thales has been involved right from the start, first on the Cairo-Alexandria project and with the signing of the contract for the modernisation of the signalling and telecom systems on the 180 km section between Asyut and Nagh Hammadi and more recently with the Cairo-Benha section with modernization of the signaling of 9 stations and 48 km of tracks. ENR is the second-largest railway operator in Africa, with a network of more than 5,000 km of track, and the second-oldest in the world after the UK.