DUBAI – The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) governments are embarking on plans to restore Hejaz Railway, the long-distance rail transport in the region and extend it across the Arabian Peninsula. The Gulf states are expected to prepare a detailed engineering design for the $15 billion joint line by end-2013 or mid-2014, an official at the GCC's Secretariat General said. “Hopefully by the beginning of 2018, the railway will start operating,” said Ibrahim Al-Sabti, director of the transportation department at the Riyadh-based secretariat. Currently, the only major rail systems operating in the GCC are a 60-year-old freight and passenger link between Riyadh and the port of Dammam in Saudi Arabia, and Dubai's metro. But that is set to change dramatically as growing populations and countries' desire to diversify their economies away from oil exports cause them to pour money into railway construction. Saudi Arabia is building a 2,750 kilometer line from Riyadh to its northern border with Jordan, aiming to complete it in 2014. About 2,260 km of additional lines are planned in Saudi Arabia, including metro systems and high-speed train projects. In the UAE, Etihad Rail has started building a link that is to transport granulated sulphur from desert gas fields to the southern port of Ruwais after it is finished in 2014. The national networks are to be connected to a joint GCC line that would run from Kuwait along the Gulf coast to Muscat in Oman. Official figures suggest around $100 billion may be spent by the end of this decade laying over 6,000 km of track for both national lines and a route linking all the states in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Trade within the GCC and its re-exports to other countries are expected to get a boost. Intra-GCC trade rose from $19.8 billion in 2003 to $65.4 billion in 2010, still only a tiny fraction of last year's total GCC trade value of $1.3 trillion. Ports in the GCC are making plans to expand partly on the assumption that they will be connected to the railway. One of them is the port of Salalah in the far south of Oman, near the border with Yemen. In 2009, a GCC feasibility study forecast the joint GCC rail line would open in 2016, carrying 29 million tons of freight out of 61 million transported by all means in the region. Annual passenger traffic was projected at 4 million people in 2016-2020, with passenger revenue of $240 million in 2016 rising to $600 million in 2045. – Reuters
