Egypt’s new monorail offers a modern ride, but Cairo is still not convinced

Cairo’s East Nile monorail opened to passengers this month as a flagship of Egypt’s infrastructure ambitions.

Cairo, Egypt – On a weekday afternoon in early May, Mohammed Adel boarded the monorail at Musheer Tantawi station and watched Cairo’s cityscape scroll by.

The 48-year-old sales manager had boarded a train on the Egyptian capital’s latest public transport transit line, Cairo’s East Nile monorail, to test it. He was satisfied with the overall experience of his brief journey.

“It’s clean, the air conditioning is good, the experience is good and I hope it continues on the same level,” he said.

For the six-station trip from Musheer Tantawi towards the New Administrative Capital, he paid 40 Egyptian pounds ($0.76). By his calculation, the monorail saves him around 200 pounds compared with other transport options on the same route.

The East Nile monorail runs 56.6km (35 miles) between Nasr City, close to central Cairo, and the New Administrative Capital, where many government offices and ministries are now based.

A few seats away, Hind Tarek described the elevated experience of the ride as “close to the feeling of flying”, with the train suspended above Cairo’s bustling streets via a series of bridges.

She had taken the monorail, opened for the public on May 6, as an experience and listed its advantages readily: it connects difficult to reach parts of Cairo, especially newer districts and it should reduce pressure on the capital’s gridlocked roads.

But there are problems too. The distance to the nearest station still requires her to make an additional journey, while the 28-year-old teacher considers the cost of a ticket to be too expensive.

That tension, between the monorail as a genuine urban achievement and a service unaffordable to many commuters, has followed the line since its opening.

Cairo is one of the 20 most populous cities in the world, with more than 10 million residents. For decades its transport infrastructure has struggled to keep pace, and it is hoped that the East Nile monorail is the answer to that problem.

The driverless, electric trains run on a series of elevated columns and tracks, integrating with the Light Rail Transit, Metro Line 3, and Bus Rapid Transit networks to create a more seamless travel experience.

Sixteen of 22 stations opened in the trial phase on May 6, with the remaining stations in Nasr City expected to follow within two months. The West Nile monorail, connecting Giza to 6th of October City, a satellite city that has been without a rail link for decades, is expected to open in September.

Osama Aqeel, a