Posted on 10/12/2009 2:36:08 PM PDT by Willie Green
"Rail is safer, faster, cleaner and [a] more economical mode of transportation. Strong logistics networks encourage trade and provide industry with a competitive advantage," Hussain Al Nowais, chairman of the UAE's newly created Union Railway Company, told delegates at a rail conference organised by Meed.
Construction of the long-awaited rail network that will link the six members of the GCC is expected to start in 2010 or 2011. The cost will be shared among the six Gulf states — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
In the UAE, the Union Railway Company has estimated it will cost up to Dh30 billion to build a countrywide network of railways by 2016, with a track length of almost 1,400km.
In Dubai, the cost of building the Metro stood at Dh28 billion for the two lines.
If everything proceeds smoothly, the GCC railway network, stretching 2,000km from the Kuwait-Iraq border to Oman, will come online in 2017.
Strategic location
Union Railway leverages the strategic location of the UAE. It aims to connect the UAE to Oman and Saudi Arabia — connecting to Sohar in Oman through Al Ain, and connecting to Fujairah in the Eastern region. It will offer two routes that provide alternative access to the Indian Ocean. The railway will also connect to Saudi Arabia through the Guweifat border and greater GCC and Mena regions.
Union Railway expects to transport 30 million tonnes of bulk and break bulk by 2015. At present, rail transport in Saudi Arabia is managed by the Saudi Railway Organisation, which provides freight services on three main lines totalling 1,018km. There are plans to extend the network to the Red Sea port of Jeddah and eventually, to the borders of Jordan, Yemen, and perhaps all the way to Egypt.
Alstom: Dubai Tram contract
French engineer Alstom said it is in talks for a five-year contract to maintain a 550 million euro (Dh2.9 billion) tram system in Dubai. It added that it is close to signing a high-speed rail project deal in Morocco.
Marc Chagnas, vice president of business development for transport in south Europe, said Alstom was also chasing a tender for a multi-billion dollar high speed rail linking Jeddah with Makkah and Madinah in Saudi Arabia.
Too bad the GOP Oil Lobby doesn't agree. I guess they'd rather have Americans pay for the OPEC trains with higher gasoline prices.
Dubai is getting ready to default on loans due to the collapse in oil prices and the rest are sweating as we write.
We will see...
How did Dubai manage to borrow that much?
Railroads aren’t all that expensive to build. The security in that terrorist paradise must be a bear, though.
Maybe they can use the “expertise” of Bill Richardson. He built New Mexico’s new commuter line for under a half billion dollars including 15 miles of new track on a route up a steep cliff face to Santa Fe (originally the money was going to rebuild portions of the original decaying interstate serving the same route). It’s very popular, that’s for sure; over 26,400 boardings over the Labor Day weekend. Where else can you travel 200 miles round trip for the cost of a super-sized McDonald’s Big Mac?? Tax-payers approved a transit tax last fall but doubt if even that will cover the O&M costs.
Richardson going to the mideast, you think?? We wish!!
How did Dubai manage to borrow that much?
I don't know if it's true that Dubai is going belly-up or not.
But they must've spent a gazillion dollars to build Palm Jumeirah:
Then they went hogwild to build a bunch of similar, luxury desert islands:
It irks me whenever I recall that Americans financed this extravagence by spending $4/gallon at the pump.
The Arabs sure know how to spend money. We, and the Brits, found and developed their oil and they nationalized them.
A bunch of nomadic Bedouins who barely had two drachmas to rub together had trillions dumped on them.
I was reading in today's Washington Times about Dubai's financial troubles.
Does that mean we can expect Amtrak to make money?
Does that mean we can expect Amtrak to make money?Not as long as the private freight lines own the tracks that Amtrak is forced to use.
Only way Amtrak is ever making money is if they dump every route that’s outside the Eastern Corridor. Americans just aren’t train riders, no matter how hard some people try to make us.
I love trains. Or at least I did, until the last time I rode Amtrak. Never again.
My guess is that no enterprise run by the government will so much as break even, much less make a profit.
As much as I love to blame the government it’s deeper than that. We’re a car culture, we like our individual travel arrangements, leaving when we want, making any side trips we want, loading what we want, and having our beloved car at our destination. The only reason we fly anywhere is because we’re such a big country a lot of it is just too far to drive to in the time allotted.
In general, if there is insufficient demand for your product or service, you will not stay in business long.
That is, you won't stay in business unless the government continues to throw taxpayer money your way.
You may be right about ours being a "car culture." Even so, people would take the train if it were cheaper and more convenient than driving or flying. Otherwise, passenger rail will never make a profit. Either way, I would like to see the government get out of the passenger rail business.
Whether something is economical depends on the CULTURE and, more specifically, preferences of people. As a true Marxist, Willie Green purports to know what preferences of Americans SHOULD be; he would build high speed trains regardless of whether Americans want them or not.
You can continue to be a Marxist, Mr. Green. But could you at least learn some economics (in particular, something about consumers' utility functions) before you resort to your silly propaganda?
P.S. You already have your favorite president in the White House. What does a Marxist like you still doing on FR?
Remember passenger rail in America used to be private, and demand kept evaporating more and more until the formation of Amtrak in 1971 to bail it out. Without Nixon and Amtrak (and possibly even if Nixon’s original plan had been followed) we would have very little if any passenger rail in America.
But train can’t really get more convenient than driving or flying. For anything short cars beat everything, door to door, your schedule, your route, and you get your car on the other side so you don’t have to rent a car or figure out the local public transit. For anything long planes are faster, even if we get Maglevs they’re probably going to stop at multiple cities and still lose in speed to the plane. Trains are a 19th century item and this is the 21st.
I’d love to see the government out of the passenger rail business. But that does mean it basically dies. I’m OK with that. Others, not so much.
This is actually a highly myopic and distorted version of reality. Demand didn't so much "evaporate" as it was boiled off by opposing economic interests. But then that doesn't fit the know-nothing template so prevalent on FR these days.
America is becoming obsolete before our own eyes....
Please explain.
America is becoming obsolete before our own eyes....
Yes, the Council on Foreign Relation has determined that the only way to have Peace & Harmony in the World is if we "voluntarily" abandon our position as a "superpower".
Therefor, BOTH major parties march lockstep in this direction despite having superficially different global agendas.
IOW, most of our political "leaders", no matter their party affiliation, are a bunch of idiots.
How quaint, come in, use no facts, and throw around insults.
Meanwhile out in reality people naturally moved away from train travel. First passenger air took a big chunk of the long distance travel because air is faster. Then as we became more and more fond of our cars, and as the Eisenhower interstate program went further along, cars took the mid-range travel. And thus the market for trains evaporated.
If you have contradicting FACTS then bring them, if all you’ve got is insults then you’re reflecting your own last sentence.
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