The General Authority for Transport Passengers in Alexandria signed on Tuesday a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with China’s leading new-energy car maker BYD to conduct a feasibility study on a 128 kilometer monorail project to be implemented in eight stages in the city.
The monorail will be the first sky rail monorail to be constructed on the African continent, based on Build–operate–transfer (BOT) system.
Three monorail lines will be likely constructed in the project. The first line will link Carrefour area in Alexandria to Raml Station. The second will link Carrefour area to Sedi Gaber, while the third will link Montazah district to Ras al-Teen district, Chairman of the General Authority for Passenger Transport in Alexandria, Khaled Eliwa, said.
Eliwa added that the authority in Alexandria will set a long-term plan to construct a monorail’s line from Alexandria to Borg al-Arab.
The monorail can transport between 10,000 and 15,000 passengers per hour through one direction as a part of the authority’s plan to develop the system of transport and traffic after the numbers of cars have increased over the capacity of roads in Alexandria, Eliwa said.
BYD began to produce and sell passenger vehicles in Egypt many years ago. Nearly one-third of taxis in Cairo are made by BYD. The carmaker has spent around 5 years 750 million US dollars to develop the system named Yungui (Skyrail). Monorail trains can run at a maximum speed of 80 km per hour.
Edited Translation from al-Masry al-Youm
