Abu Dhabi: The proposed GCC Railway linking the six GCC countries will be 2,117km long, officials have said.
The tracks running from Kuwait City to Muscat will be designed for passenger trains to run at 200km/h and freight trains at 80-120km/h.
Meanwhile, meetings of the technical and financial committees of the GCC Railway have been scheduled at Abu Dhabi tomorrow and Thursday.
Representatives from the GCC countries also met yesterday to discuss the technicalities and the project time-line.
"Today, everybody will present where they are, what they have done, and we'll go over the points where we need to agree, so basically the whole thing," Abdullah Salem Al Katheeri, Executive Director of Land Transport Department at the UAE's National Transport Authority (NTA), told reporters yesterday before the meeting. "It's only a technical meeting to discuss technical matters."
Overall cost
Before the economic slowdown, the overall cost of the project had been estimated at $15 billion (Dh55.17 billion), Al Katheeri said.
According to a report released in December, infrastructure work alone will cost an estimated $11.2 billion. Each country will meet the cost of the infrastructure in its respective territory, the report said.
In the UAE, Union Railway, the developer and operator of the proposed national railway, had announced that it would tender civil engineering contracts in March. The Union Railway is pre-qualifying bidders to begin the first phase of the Shah-Habshan-Ruwais section, which will eventually become part of the GCC Railway. Construction of that section is scheduled to start in mid-2011.
"In the Emirates, we are on track. We're actually ahead on a lot of things," Al Katheeri said. So if everybody starts on the right time, it's possible to do it, he said.
One of the points of discussion was Oman's suggestion to have its trains run on electricity rather than diesel. No decision has been made on that yet as the relevant committee is studying feasibility issues.
