Key talks held on Saudi-Bahrain rail link
Dammam, February 27, 2013
A meeting to discuss the railway project linking Saudi Arabia and Bahrain was held this week y at the General Organization for King Fahd Causeway in Dammam.
The feasibility study of the project is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2014, a report said.
The meeting included representatives from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the General Secretariat of GCC states, and the team in charge of preparing and studying the feasibility of the railway project.
The project comes under the of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) railway project that will link all GCC countries, as well as the Gulf lines with the national transportation of those countries. The whole project with, over 6,000 km of track, is expected to be ready by 2018 with a budget of $100 billion, said a report in the Saudi Gazette.
The new railway will help reduce pressure on the current transportation in the area due to the increase of population and enhance trade cooperation among the Gulf countries, it said.
The GCC states are also planning to restore Hejaz Railway, the long-distance rail transport in the region and extend it across the Arabian Peninsula, the report said.
The Gulf states are expected to prepare a detailed engineering design for the $15 billion joint line by end-2013 or mid-2014, an official at the GCC’s Secretariat General was quoted as saying.
