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ShareKUWAIT: The State of Kuwait is seeking through the GCC railway mega venture to play a key role in boosting pan-GCC economic integration and sustainable development in the region. Situated in the strategic northernmost of the Gulf, Kuwait aspires to be a regional hub for commerce and transports. The predicted high flow of merchandise and passengers aboard the trains is expected to help Kuwait realize its vision.
The planned 2,217-kilometer-long railway stretches from Kuwait to Dammam in Saudi Arabia, then to Bahrain and Qatar. It also extends from Saudi Arabia to Abu Dhabi, Al-Ain and Muscat, the GCC Secretariat General said on its official website.
How it started
The mega project was first broached at the 2009 GCC Summit, held in Bahrain, with proposals to link up the six GCC member states via the network. The aim is to facilitate inter-GCC commerce, citizens’ movement, and supporting joint enterprises in line with the bloc’s trade integration strategy.
Kuwait’s Public Authority for Roads and Transportation (PART) has been tasked, in coordination with relevant authorities, with taking charge of Kuwait’s section of the project, which is expected to slash expenditures on road renovations and cut down fuel emissions with the decrease of cars and trucks travelling between the cities connected by rail. The project is also expected to create new jobs and facilitate the creation of new urban areas where the rail network passes.
Where Kuwait stands
Khaled Al-Osaimi, PART Director General, said in remarks to KUNA that the Authority for Partnership Projects had been tasked with conducting studies and executing the venture. A feasibility study was complete in 2012 and revised in 2016, stipulating the approach to execute it in partnership between the public and private sectors.
A number of international consultancy houses had presented bids to provide consultations for the design of the project. The bids were examined and relayed to the Central Agency for Public Tenders, Osaimi indicated. Examining the bids is expected to take 12 months, after which the authority will float tenders for the execution of the project, which must be completed within 30 months. He said executing the Kuwaiti section of the network should be finalized by 2030. The first section of the Kuwaiti railway stretches from the border town of Al-Nuwaiseeb in southern Kuwait to Al-Shedadiah. The train will run at 200 kilometers per hour.
How far GCC countries are
In the UAE, construction of the railway reaching the Saudi borders has been finalized. Galfar Engineering Company declared in April that it won the project to design and build a 303-km-long railway linking Abu Dhabi with Oman - at a cost of $3 billion. The UAE news agency, WAM, quoted Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Suhail Al-Mazroui saying that Al-Hafeet Rail is complementary to the GCC Railway network and will contribute to the planned GCC countries’ economic merger.
In Qatar, authorities have finished the designs of the domestic section of the Gulf Railway and Bahrain declared that a section of the rail would be built on a bridge reaching Saudi Arabia. Last February, Director General of the Gulf Railway Authority Mohammad Al-Shabrami visited Kuwait and examined the executive plans of the railway’s part in the country.
Riyadh-Kuwait train
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia agreed on June 4, 2023, to establish a railway between Kuwait and Riyadh. The high-speed train to be operated will cross the long distance in approximately two hours and a half. The Kuwaiti government declared in February the start of studying the Kuwaiti-Saudi project. Also in this vein, the CEO of Agility Tareq Al-Sultan told KUNA that Kuwait and Riyadh will support cargo and passenger transport between the two cities. He added that he hoped the GCC railway network would be expanded to include more countries in the region, such as Jordan and Iraq. — KUNA
