Cairo Monorail Lines between Concept and Reality

Cairo Monorail line is one of the largest transportation projects in the Middle East. The project involves the construction of two monorail lines, which will create the first public transport connection from both New Capital City (approximately 54.2 km) and 6th of October City (approximately 42.9 km) to the Greater Cairo area. The bidding and tender stage started in 2015, followed by extensive studies performed by the contributing consortiums all the way up to the final selection was made in 2019. A consortium of Alstom Transportation, Orascom Construction, and Arab Contractors was assigned to design, construct, operate, and maintain the two lines under a $4.5 billion contract signed with Egypt’s National Authority for Tunnels in August 2019. The project has significant changes and updates to best serve the public, including comfort of ridership, minimize disruption of the traffic, production quality enhancement, and expedite construction. The alignment passed through significant changes towards optimization, which highlights the importance of extensive alignment study during the bidding stage. The construction was expedited through several techniques, which is considered as a double-edged sword between quality and time. These techniques were highlighted in the foundation construction, piers and pier caps execution, guideway beam adjustment, and assembly as well as the precast process of the guideway beams. On the other side, close coordination was performed between the construction and team and the system supplier to assure the satisfaction of all the system requirements. Finally, several learned lessons are presented, which shall be considered for future projects.