The swarming metropolis of Cairo is known for its history — and for traffic congestion so bad that the Egyptian government raised an entire new city from the desert to alleviate some of the pressure on its capital. Now, a new transport system is bidding to lighten the load a little further.
The doors of the Cairo Monorail slid open to welcome passengers for the first time in May, marking the launch of Africa’s first driverless monorail network. Once completed, it could be the longest of its kind anywhere in the world.
Spanning 56.5 kilometers (35 miles) from Cairo International Stadium in the city’s Nasr City district to the ever-developing New Administrative Capital, the newly launched East Nile route is the first of two lines set to comprise the all-electric network. A 43.8-km (27-mile) West Nile path connecting 6 October City, a satellite city in the greater Cairo region, to Giza is currently under construction.
With China currently boasting the world’s longest recognized monorail, the 98.5-km (61.2-mile) Chongqing system, Egypt’s new network will eventually outrun the “cyberpunk city” network by 1.8 km (1.1 miles) as it shuttles an estimated 500,000 daily passengers to, through and from one of the continent’s largest megacities.
Opened to the public from May 6, the monorail was free to ride for the first three days before fares were introduced, with pricing tiered according to four zones. A one-way ticket to ride the full East Nile line costs 80 Egyptian pounds ($1.51), with a quarterly pass — valid for 180 trips — ranging from 1,800 EGP ($34) for one zone to 7,200 EGP ($136) for all four.
Fragmented road infrastructure and extensive traffic congestion put an enormous strain on Cairo’s three existing Metro lines to bear the load of around 500 million annual passengers, leading to a £2.3 billion (around $3 billion) contract in 2019 for French rail transport manufacturer Alstom to construct and operate a new monorail network.
Heading up a consortium involving Cairo-based Orascom Construction and Arab Contractors, Alstom manufactured 272 monorail cars at its factory in Derby, England. Financial backing was partly provided by the UK Export Finance, the United Kingdom’s governmental export credit agency.
The 68 trains, the last of which left the East Midlands for Egypt in January 2024, can shuttle up to 45,000 passengers per hour, per direction, at speeds of 80 kilometers per hour (50 mph) along precast concrete beams that wind above Cairo’s bustling streets.
Citing low emissions, minimal noise pollution and an ability to recover up to 99% of braking energy, reducing energy requirements, Alstom believes it has created a network engineered to grow alongside the city.
“Its architecture allowed capacity to be progressively increased — through service frequency, system optimization and fleet expansion — without compromising reliability or requiring disruptive infrastructure changes,” a representative for Alstom told CNN via email.
“This makes it fundamentally different from legacy systems that are often fixed in capacity from day one.”
The network uses Alstom’s Innovia platform, a service that the manufacturer has also employed for similar projects in Bangkok, Singapore and Los Angeles.
From starting and stopping to door operation and emergency response, the service can operate entirely without human involvement thanks to a signaling system that uses high-bandwidth radio communications to pinpoint train locations.
Given that six of the East Nile line’s 22 stations are not yet operational, Alstom still has work to do, but that was always the plan: the consortium committed to providing 30 years of operation and maintenance on the network after construction was completed.
The East Nile line was initially scheduled to launch in 2023 but suffered multiple delays, setbacks that will not have reassured critics concerned about the country’s recent spending on sweeping internal projects at a time of economic downturn. Having invested roughly 1.7 trillion EGP ($106.3 billion) in infrastructure between 2023 and 2025, according to the US International Trade Administration, Egypt’s external debt rose to more than $163 billion last year.
Some locals have also argued that the monorail won’t make a significant dent in the daily commute time for much of Cairo’s workforce. Though the Egyptian government projects the New Administrative Capital to one day support a population of 6.5 million and generate roughly 2 million jobs, swathes of the 270-square-mile area remain under construction.
Alstom is optimistic it has laid the groundwork for long-term success in the region, with testing and commissioning of the monorail carried out by local engineering teams.
“The East of Nile Monorail marks a major milestone in Egypt’s Vision 2030 journey toward smart, sustainable, and future ready urban mobility,” managing director of Alstom Egypt Ramy Salah Eldeen said in a press release, adding that 98% of the workforce was drawn from Egypt.
The Cairo Monorail can serve as a case study in “clean, high-capacity mobility” for other rapidly urbanizing cities across Africa, said Alstom, which is also working on projects in Morocco, Ivory Coast, Algeria and South Africa.
“The demand is there, and it will only grow,” Alstom added to CNN.
