By Patrick Werr
CAIRO (Reuters) -Egypt is working to integrate the country into a railway network connecting Asia and Europe, but a long-planned bridge that would link Saudi Arabia to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has yet to be finalised, transport minister Kamel al-Wazir said on Sunday.
Egypt has been expanding its railways along seven separate axes, he said. These include three high-speed lines that would connect Sokhna Port on the Red Sea with the Mediterranean and Alexandria in the north and with Aswan in the far south.
Israel and Iraq have likewise been spending billions of dollars on rail lines with an eye towards tapping the east-west trade. All the plans involve loading cargo onto ships for part of the journey.
“We have now completed the planning for the bridge between Egypt and Saudi Arabia and are ready to implement it at any time – whether a bridge or a tunnel,” Wazir told Reuters on the sideline of an economic conference organised by the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt.
“But the (current) solution for connecting Egypt with Saudi Arabia and Jordan is through the Arab Bridge Maritime Co. which currently has 13 vessels that can take cargo between Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.”
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman announced during a visit to Egypt in 2016 the idea for a bridge, which would complement a mega-city and business zone called NEOM the Saudis were building across the Straits of Tiran.
Rail cargo would be sent to a series of ports on the Mediterranean that Egypt has been upgrading over the last decade.
The high-speed train line connecting to Egypt’s south would skirt the edge of the pyramids area in the desert, while simultaneously serving the site, he added.
A proposed route through the site of Abydos, where Egypt’s first pharaohs were buried 5,000 years ago, has been diverted to pass over the plateau above and away from the antiquities site.
(Reporting by Patrick Werr; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
