After Egypt's 1st monorail contract, Bombardier may be part of another project

CAIRO – 14 September 2020: President of Bombardier Inc. Danny Di Perna stated in a TV interview Sunday that he had met with Minister of Transportation Kamel al-Wazir to discuss possibilities of renovating Egyptian train engines or even manufacturing new ones.

He added that the minister had visited the factory in Germany. Given that Egypt had signed a deal with General Electric to purchase train engines, TV Host Osama Kamal asked Di Perna if Bombarider is better than its American counterpart. The Bombardier president answered that they are competitors, and that Bombarider and Siemens jointly manufacture an outstanding product, according to Al Shorouk newspaper.

Replying to whether rail transportation will become dominant in the future, Di Perna highlighted that electric trains are environment friendly and that they are convenient to move from one country to another within one continent, and even within the borders of the same state.

The Bombardier president revealed that the meeting with President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi in August 2019 lasted for almost three hours before signing the deal of executing Egypt's first monorail project.

Di Perna underlined that the Egyptian president insisted on a reduced cost, and that has been agreed upon by all parties after years of planning and negotiations.

The project is being implemented by a coalition encompassing Bombardier, Orascom Construction, and the Arab Contractors, and may be replicated in Alexandria after its accomplishment.

The chairman stated that warehouses are being built in the New Administrative Capital and 6th of October City at the ends of the line, and that the coalition will provide maintenance and secure spare parts.

The contracts stipulate to design, construct, operate and maintain the two monorail projects of both cities.

The starting point of the monorail of the new capital will start in Nasr city with a 3 kilometer length, and Sixth of October's monorail will start from Giza with a length of about 42 km.

The monorail of the New Administrative Capital includes 21 stations: Stadium - Hisham Barakat - Nuri Khattab - Seventh district - Zakir Hussein - Free Zone - Marshal Tantawi - Cairo Festival - Choueifat - Emaar – Al-Nafoura Square – Al-Barwa - Middle Ring Road - Mohammed bin Zayed - Regional Ring - Almasa Hotel - Ministries Quarter - Administrative Capital.

The monorail of the Sixth of October City includes 12 stations and will serve the major expansions of the city, especially social housing projects.

In May 2019, Bombardier had announced being selected to establish a €3 billion ($3.36 billion) monorail project in Egypt that will run from Cairo to the eastern and western outskirts.

The total value of the design, build and O&M contract exceeds $4.5 billion (EUR 4.1 billion). Bombardier Transportation’s share is $2.85 billion (EUR 2.6 billion) and Orascom Construction’s share is close to $900 million. 

Orascom Construction will design and build all infrastructure and civil works, including stations, guide way structures and new depot buildings.

The government announced earlier that a number of international and local consortiums submitted to the project. According to the announcement, the project consultant, the technical committee and the bid committee reviewed and evaluated all the offers submitted in accordance with the conditions, criteria and principles on which the bid evaluation process was based.

In January 2019, Deputy Minister of Transport Amr Shaat said that Canadian, Chinese and Malaysian Companies compete in the bid launched by the Ministry of Transport and Ministry of Housing to set up two monorail projects at the New Administrative Capital.

The two lines will be able to transport around 45,000 passengers per hour in each direction when ultimate capacity is reached. With operating speeds of up to 80 km/h; the journey time for the new Capital will be around 60 minutes (for 54 km line) and around 42 minutes for 6 October City (42 km line), according to the company.