Egyptian senator demands more reliance on freight trains, inland transportation to reduce traffic accidents

CAIRO – 29 August 2022: Member of the Housing, Municipal Management, and Transport Committee at the Senate Hani al-Assal demanded expanding reliance on freight trains and inland transportation to reduce traffic accidents.

That is because, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), traffic accidents caused by lorries account for 27.8 percent of the country's total.

Further, the senator also demanded the allocation of a lane for lorries on highways and the Ring Road, installation of tracking devices on those vehicles to ensure they abide by the maximum speed mandated by law, better training drivers, and making it mandatory to have two drivers on the lorry, as fatigue is not a less trivial accident cause than drugs.

Chairman of Simaf Locomotives Ismail al-Nagdy stated in a phone-in in July that the company is manufacturing Egypt's first freight train dedicated to the transportation of food staples and grains.

Nagdy pointed out that 80 percent of the components are locally made, and that the train will consist of 25 units with a total capacity of 1,625 tons. He added that those have already been finished, and that 50 others will be produced over the next few months. 

The Egyptian Railway Authority (ERA) released in January 2021 a statement indicating the measures it had taken to raise the size of cargo transported through the railway network from 3.1 million tons in 2019 to 25 million tons in 2025.

General Electric (GE) would rehabilitate 81 train engines, while Egypt’s SEMAF Factory would supply 140 goods wagons at a cost of LE544 million. The factory would also supply 125 flatcars to transport containers from seaports to other destinations in the country.

The authority began transporting cargo between Ain Sokhna Port and Robeiky Textile Complex on the line extending between Suez governorate and Ain Shams neighborhood in Cairo. ERA also resumed transporting wheat from Port Said Port to silos after suspension for years.

Double-stack container trains are being allocated to transport cargo from the seaports of Alexandria, Damietta, and Dekheila. Further, the authority had prepared a plan to renovate the line stretching from Abou Tartour in the Western Desert to Safaga in the Red Sea passing through Qena. The length of the line is 800 kilometers, and it is used in transporting phosphate, phosphoric acid, and cereals.

Another plan is set to develop the 60-kilometer line connecting Suez Port with Ain Sokhna Port passing through Adabeya Port on the Red Sea. That is to expand the line’s capacity.

In a similar context, ERA had already begun establishing a line to transport cargo from Kafr Daoud to Sadat City. Both are located in Menoufeya, and the line extends over 35 kilometers.