On the morning of this past 1 July, the first day of the 2026/2027 fiscal year, Walid Mahmoud (52), an employee at the head office of the Ministry of Awqaf, was waiting for the train at Bulaq El-Dakrour station when the presenter of the metro’s internal radio announced that the minimum wage was being raised from EGP 7,000 to EGP 8,000. The news item ended, and the station moved on to a musical segment marking the 30 June celebrations, while Walid was thinking about the daily cost of the journey to his workplace in the Administrative Capital.
«I have not tried the monorail and I will not try it; the ticket is EGP 80 for a single trip», Walid tells Zawia3. He lives on Humphreys Street in Bulaq El-Dakrour and takes the metro every day to Adly Mansour station in north-east Cairo, then changes transport once again, taking a microbus to the head office of the Ministry of Awqaf in the Administrative Capital.
A monorail ticket costs EGP 20 for travel of up to 5 stations, rising to EGP 40 for up to 10 stations, increasing to EGP 55 for up to 15 stations, and reaching EGP 80 for a full-line journey from Nasr City to the Administrative Capital, a total of 22 stations. Meanwhile, a single underground metro ticket (across its three lines) costs EGP 10 for travel of up to 9 stations, EGP 12 for up to 16 stations, EGP 15 for up to 23 stations, and EGP 20 for up to 39 stations (the entire line).
The employee at the Ministry of Awqaf head office in the Administrative Capital continues that travelling by monorail could cost him more than EGP 200 a day, since he would have to take the metro from where he lives to Stadium station, then take the monorail, then get off at the station to take the Capital’s internal bus, whose ticket costs EGP 5, to move between the buildings of the new city.
Urban researcher Ibrahim Ezz El-Din believes that the monorail’s crisis is not limited to the lack of integration with other means of transport, but extends to the lack of integration with existing cities and with citizens’ ways of life, explaining that planning for any means of transport must take into account the user’s complete daily journey, from reaching the departure station, through using the service, to the distance he covers after getting off to reach his workplace or final destination.
He tells Zawia3 that these basic considerations should have been taken into account when the “monorail plan” was prepared, questioning the real aim of the project and whether it is meant to meet citizens’ needs or merely to create a huge project linked to the New Administrative Capital, where, in his view, the nature of its residents and its price levels mean that most of its inhabitants belong to groups able to own private vehicles, for whom the monorail does not represent a primary means of transport.
He points out that officials themselves do not rely on mass transport for their journeys, and that the owners of villas and residential units in the Administrative Capital own private means of transport.
In an attempt to attract the public, the monorail operating company is applying a decision to cut ticket prices by 50% on Fridays and Saturdays every week and on official holidays, and the Ministry of Transport has introduced a monorail subscription system offering a discount of up to 50% on the regular ticket price.
Ibrahim Ezz El-Din comments that sound planning does not mean building a means of transport and then searching afterwards for what will push citizens to use it, considering that this approach turns the planning process upside down and is like “buying the shoelace before the shoe itself”, as he described it.
He adds that the success of any transport project is tied to achieving clear development goals, such as making it easier for residents to move to new urban areas or reducing the time of the daily “pendulum journey” between home and work, in addition to offering an affordable cost to the citizen, which is what drives citizens to use the project naturally.
The Monorail: Transport or a Pleasure Ride?
In 2021, the government and the Ministry of Transport denied that the monorail lacked viability, amid criticism of the project’s implementation. And after the first phase of the monorail officially began operating on 6 May 2026, opinions and analyses by academics still hold that it is of no use to the ordinary citizen, let alone economically viable.
The total value of the contract to design, build, operate and maintain the monorail exceeded $4.5 billion (€4.1 billion), according to the agreement concluded on 5 August 2019 between Bombardier Transportation, Orascom Construction, The Arab Contractors and the National Authority for Tunnels, under which Bombardier Transportation’s share amounts to about $2.85 billion (€2.6 billion), while Orascom Construction’s share comes to nearly $900 million, in addition to other dues owed to unknown parties.
In recent statements in May 2026, Minister of Transport Kamel El-Wazir said that the cost of implementing the monorail east and west of the Nile amounts to only about $2.8 billion, denying reports that the cost had reached $4.5 billion, and pointing out that resorting to foreign loans to finance transport projects is cheaper than domestic borrowing, because the loans are granted at interest rates reaching 0.1% and with repayment periods extending to 40 years.
The East Nile monorail links Cairo, from Stadium station on Metro Line 3 on Salah Salem Street, with New Cairo and the New Administrative Capital, over a length of 56.5 km through 22 stations, the first being “Stadium” and the last “Administrative Capital”, while the West Nile monorail links Giza, starting from Gamaat El-Dowal station on Metro Line 3, with the cities of Sheikh Zayed and 6th of October and their extensions.
According to a statement by the Ministry of Transport in September 2022, the cost of building one kilometre of the monorail line is $30 million, with a capacity of 25,000 to 45,000 passengers per hour and 600,000 passengers per day.
Amid weak demand for the monorail and talk of the project’s failure, the East Nile monorail administration announced that the new means of transport was ready to host wedding parties inside its stations or on board its trains, and the monorail administration justified the decision as aimed at strengthening citizens’ attachment to the modern means of transport.
Urban researcher Ibrahim Ezz El-Din believes that the current weak demand for the monorail may be natural if the plan aims for the project to reach high usage rates after years of operation; the problem, from his point of view, however, lies in the absence of any clear announcement of this time target.
He adds that if the government was aiming for citizens to use the monorail from day one, then the low number of passengers shows that the project does not respond to an actual need among citizens, unlike the new metro lines, which draw riders as soon as they open because they meet an existing demand for transport.
He questions the size of the groups that currently rely on the monorail, whether residents of the Administrative Capital or employees working there, considering that the weak demand is an indicator of a flaw in the planning system, because means of transport created in response to real needs do not need, as he describes it, campaigns inviting citizens to use them or weddings held on them.
He points out that resorting to cutting ticket prices or organising promotional events inside the monorail to attract passengers is an unusual phenomenon for public transport, because its success is supposed to rest on real demand existing for it from the start, not on publicity.
For his part, economic expert Elhamy El-Merghany says that the weak demand for the monorail cannot be considered natural in the first years of operation, but rather reflects, from his point of view, a flaw in the project’s economic planning and in the choice of its route.
He explains to Zawia3 that monorails are usually built in densely populated cities where it is difficult to construct a surface metro or tram lines because of narrow and congested streets, whereas in Egypt it was built, as he describes it, in desert areas lacking population density, which amounts to a waste of resources and their mismanagement.
He adds that the project was built on loans, whose instalments and interest are supposed to be repaid from operating revenues, considering that this raises questions about borrowing priorities and about directing borrowing towards such projects.
Cutting Subsidies: Egypt Raises Electricity Prices for the Fifth Time in Five Years
The Philosophy of Urbanism Before Construction
Urban researcher Ibrahim Ezz El-Din explains that creating any means of transport within the framework of urban planning rests on one of two main goals: the first is serving a new city by providing a means of transport linking it to other areas, and the second is responding to an actual need, namely easing traffic densities and congestion within existing cities, on the basis of a prior plan that defines the nature of the project, its goals and its target groups.
He explains that the monorail project is supposed to serve the New Administrative Capital, continuing that the plan should have specified the number of residents targeted to move to the city, the expected timeframe for the population density to be reached, the directions from which residents would move, and whether the target groups include ministry employees or residents moving to live there.
He continues that these details should have been announced as part of the plan; what happens in Egypt, however, according to him, is that plans are not made available to the public, as the citizen sees only the implementation stage, while the government takes decisions on projects without disclosing the studies or planning justifications on which they were based, which reflects, from his point of view, a lack of transparency of information.
He cites the experience of the new cities that began in the 1970s, pointing out that many of these cities did not reach the population numbers targeted by their original plans, which means, in his estimation, that the new cities experience was not fully successful and needed a reassessment of the planning vision, including the transport system linked to it.
On the effect of population density and of the activities around the stations on the number of passengers, Ezz El-Din answers that this is tied to the goal for which the project was created, and explains: if the monorail serves a new city, the plan is supposed to make clear whether it passes through existing urban areas that would allow it to draw passengers from current cities to the new city, but this information has not been announced.
He adds that citizens settled in existing cities already rely on means of transport that meet their daily needs, such as the metro or the microbus, and therefore see no reason to use the monorail if it is far from where they live or work, or if it does not offer a shorter journey time or better service than the means of transport they are used to.
He continues that this raises a question about the actual need for the project, in the absence of a clear plan explaining the reasons for building it and the mechanisms linking it to existing cities, noting that users of public transport in Egypt belong mainly to low- and middle-income segments, groups for which the Administrative Capital is not yet a daily destination, whether for living or for getting their affairs done, and considering that the problem relates not only to weak integration with other means of transport but also to the lack of integration with citizens’ needs and ways of life.
القرض أسرع من القطار: كيف تجاوزت ديون «القومية للأنفاق» تريليوني جنيه؟
The Economy in Crisis
The head of an economic research centre, who declined to be named for reasons of personal safety, limits his comment to saying that the monorail project “was not the right time for it, and is not the optimal project”, in his words, adding to Zawia3 that economic priorities require directing investment towards building factories that help increase production, provide jobs, boost exports and bring in foreign currency.
A well-known economic expert and academic, who preferred not to be named, describes the monorail project as “devoid of economic viability”, adding that its economic viability is “negative”, and considering that it contradicts the very philosophy behind the establishment of the New Administrative Capital.
The economic expert explains to Zawia3 that the aim of the Administrative Capital, as announced, was to move a population bloc of between 5 and 7 million people out of Greater Cairo, and therefore providing a daily means of transport to carry them back and forth contradicts, from his point of view, the idea of resettlement on which the city was founded in the first place.
He adds that the monorail is “against the idea of the Administrative Capital” from an urban planning perspective, because new cities are supposed to be built on settling residents and providing all services to them within the city, not on relying on their daily commute from the heart of Cairo.
He believes that monorail trains are used around the world within crowded cities where it is difficult to expand roads or build a surface metro, whereas in Egypt the line stretches over a long distance above ground level, which he considers “against all reason, and against any feasibility study”, in his words.
He explains that the monorail train continuing to run above the ground for a distance of up to 56 kilometres is not, in his opinion, consistent with the usual uses of this type of transport, considering that the project lacks the technical and economic foundations that would justify implementing it in this way.
He points out that the monorail is not used in any country in this way, on pillars in the desert, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, which he says built long monorail lines above ground, and Egypt followed it in this.
He explains that the principle behind this type of transport system is to bypass traffic bottlenecks within crowded cities by running the train on pillars along an elevated track and then returning to run on the ground again once past the bottlenecks and high density, not to run for long distances entirely on an elevated track without reason or benefit.
He considers that implementing the project in this way raises questions about the technical and economic foundations on which it was based, and believes that it is inconsistent with the principles of urban planning and with feasibility studies for transport projects.
Weak Demand Is Not the Only Factor
Elhamy El-Merghany believes that judging the success of any transport project does not depend on the number of passengers alone, but on a set of economic indicators, including revenues, cash flows, the capital payback period, and the economic and developmental return, noting that these indicators, from his point of view, have not been achieved in the monorail project, besides the fact that it does not serve the low-income citizen.
He states that if monorail passenger numbers continue at levels below the target, this will lead to weak revenues, which may force the government to find resources from other budget items or projects to pay the loan instalments and their interest, turning the project into a burden on public finances.
He considers that failing to achieve the targeted revenues and numbers of trips and passengers will make the project, as he describes it, “a major economic mistake”, and reflects poor economic management.
For his part, Ibrahim Ezz El-Din states that the number of passengers should not be the only indicator, explaining that judging the success of any means of transport depends first on its ability to achieve the development goal for which it was created: if the project aims to serve a new city, the criterion of success is its ability to attract residents to that city and relieve densities in existing cities, alongside ease of access to it, the extent to which services are available there, and citizens’ ability to buy or rent housing units in it.
He points out that providing a fast means of transport that makes it possible to reach a new city within a reasonable time, together with the availability of services and residents’ purchasing power, means the success of the project and the city together, noting that a means of transport is not an end in itself but a tool for achieving broader development goals.
He adds that regarding the construction of the monorail as an achievement in its own right reflects a flaw in the planning process, because the real achievement lies not in building a road or a means of transport, but in the results it delivers after operation, such as reducing population densities, reducing accidents and encouraging citizens to give up private cars in favour of public transport, saving time and cost and increasing the efficiency of mobility, and he believes that these indicators are the ones that should be relied upon when assessing the success of transport projects and new cities.
On whether there are alternatives to the monorail, Ezz El-Din says that planning methodology requires studying a range of alternatives and weighing them against each other according to planning and economic viability before taking a decision; what appears, however, according to him, is that the monorail project was put forward from the start as the only option without considering other alternatives, as if the goal were to own a huge monorail network rather than to meet an actual development need.
He points to less costly alternatives that were available, including upgrading the traditional mass transport system and public buses and allocating dedicated lanes to them, instead of implementing a project that requires spending billions of pounds and is accompanied by the expropriation and reallocation of about 415 feddans of government and private land.
He believes that the project imposes a high social and economic cost as a result of the huge spending and the expropriations, considering that it serves publicity and the showcasing of a huge project more than any real development goal, which reflects, in his estimation, a flaw in the transparency of information and in the decision-making mechanism during the planning and implementation stages.
$11 Billion Left in One Month: What the Iran War Revealed About Egypt’s Economy
The Monorail Is Not for the Poor, Nor for the Capital
The economic expert and academic affirms that the economic viability of the monorail project is “negative” and that its effects on the economy will be negative, predicting that it will meet a fate similar to that of the Light Rail Transit (LRT) if weak demand for it continues.
On ticket prices, he says the problem has nothing to do with their level, explaining: “Even if it became free… what is the need for the monorail?”, and considering that the absence of an actual need to use the monorail is the fundamental crisis, and that the expected revenues will not be able to cover construction costs however high ticket prices rise.
He states that the project “has no viability” in the first place, as he describes it, pointing out that the alternative is to settle workers inside the Administrative Capital by completing its schools, universities, hospitals, markets, government services and the various essentials of life there, which would reduce the need to transport hundreds of thousands of employees every day.
He believes that the crisis stems not only from the economic feasibility studies of projects, but from “the absence of vision”, considering that planning for the Administrative Capital should have focused on settling residents inside it rather than building a huge means of transport to carry them every day.
Elhamy El-Merghany, meanwhile, comments on monorail ticket prices, which range between EGP 20 and EGP 80, that they indicate the feasibility study did not take into account the economic and social conditions of the target groups, and did not adequately assess citizens’ ability to bear the cost of using the monorail as a daily means of transport.
He also believes that the project’s feasibility studies failed to estimate the size of the expected demand, and did not carry out the necessary economic comparison between the monorail and a surface metro in terms of cost, operating route, number of stations, ticket prices and investment payback period.
El-Merghany states that implementing projects that cost the state billions of dollars requires preparing accurate feasibility studies based on realistic data and clear estimates of expected demand and return, calling for those studies to be reviewed and for those responsible for preparing and approving them to be held accountable.
Ibrahim Ezz El-Din, for his part, believes that the cost of a monorail ticket, which ranges between EGP 20 and EGP 80 depending on the length of the journey, raises questions about the project’s target group and about how far its pricing is consistent with the goal for which it was created.
He explains that public transport systems in many European countries are planned primarily to attract private car users to mass transport, but the citizen will compare the cost of using the monorail with the cost of using his car and may find the car cheaper, while the low-income citizen will compare the monorail with traditional means of transport such as the microbus (which may take him to his destination for about EGP 10 a trip), which, despite the crowding, will remain the cheapest option for him.
Ezz El-Din points out that the project’s cost and its operating prices should have been among the basic elements studied by the planner from the outset, because the high cost of use raises a fundamental question about which groups will actually turn to using the monorail once it is in operation.
He believes that this scenario places additional economic burdens on citizens, explaining that instead of completing their transactions in Tahrir Square via the low-cost metro network, they may be forced to pay about EGP 80 to go and EGP 80 to return in order to reach the Administrative Capital, even though the current vision indicates that citizens will not need to go there in person to obtain their government services.
With a construction cost of $4.5 billion and a ticket price of up to EGP 80, the monorail is trying to attract passengers through discounts and weddings inside its trains, and while the government describes the project as a leap forward in the transport system, economic and urban experts believe that the crisis goes beyond weak demand to questions about planning, viability and the size of real demand.
After three in the afternoon, Walid Mahmoud heads back home again after work, by microbus and then metro, after a single day’s transport costs have eaten up more than EGP 90 there and back. “EGP 20 for the metro ticket and EGP 26 from outside Adly Mansour station to the ministry’s head office, and the same on the way back,” says the Ministry of Awqaf head office employee, adding: “Changing my transport routine could increase my financial burdens, especially as I set aside a large part of my monthly salary to get to work since the ministry was permanently moved from Bab El-Louk in Downtown, about 3 years ago.”
