Time for the Gulf to let the train take the strain

Some decades ago, in a previous existence, I was required to make regular trips from my newspaper’s head office in London more than 500 kilometers north to our outpost in Glasgow in the west of Scotland. Since Glasgow is my home city, the visits were always a pleasure; getting there was another matter.

The trips began with a seemingly interminable trek from my home in east London to Heathrow Airport in the west. Then there was the airport nightmare itself. First, this being an era before online convenience, it was the queue to check in and obtain a boarding pass. Then the queue for security. Then security itself: “Did you pack this bag yourself, sir?” — “Do I look like someone who employs a personal bag packer?” — “Very good, sir. Now take off your shoes. And take off your belt. Do you have any liquids in your hand baggage?” And how many terrorists did they catch with this nonsense? Not one. Ever.

But onward to the flight itself, less than an hour — mercifully short, because my body is built for comfort rather than speed: it has never taken kindly to being shoe-horned into a straitjacket, unable to move forward, back or sideways. I don’t so much sit in a short-haul commuter airline seat as wear it.

After allowing for take-off and landing, the plane’s time at cruising altitude was never more than 30 minutes, but instead of leaving us in peace the cabin crew insisted on running around like headless chickens serving vile airline “food” that passengers picked at out of boredom — there being nothing else to do, and in any case no room to do it in.

Those Gulf states that invest in their own passenger rail infrastructure would encourage the laggards, efficient public transport being a key driver in attracting people to live and work

Ross Anderson

I detested that journey. At one point I even considered driving instead, but it would have taken up a whole unproductive day and I would have arrived knackered at the end of it. Then, on the London Underground one day on my way, yet again, to Heathrow, it occurred to me that the solution was staring me in the face. Or rather, I was sitting in it: the train.

And that was how I discovered the joys of the UK West Coast main line, which transformed my travel experience. Firstly, there was the ticket. My employers, who funded my travel, were delighted to discover that for about two-thirds of the cost of being herded like cattle in an airport and then squeezed into a British Airways sardine can for an hour, I could obtain a first-class return between London Euston and Glasgow Central.

Then there was the accommodation: a seat both larger and more comfortable than business class on an Airbus A380; a capacious table for my laptop and assorted bits and pieces; a dedicated steward serving quality food and drinks on demand; and finally, when I wanted a break from work, my favorite part — the panoramic window.

On a one-hour flight there is not even time to watch a movie. On a four-hour train journey, the movie takes place outside as you whizz by at 200kph: the back gardens of suburban north London, each with a story to tell, give way to rural England, golf courses and farmers’ fields, then the majesty of the northwest Lake District, followed by the undulating southern uplands of Scotland, and finally gritty south Glasgow as the train speeds through the Gorbals — once the most notorious slum in Europe, now a desirable residential area.

I loved that journey, and nowadays I am not alone. Cross-border passenger rail traffic in Europe increased by 7 percent in 2024 compared with 2023, as more people discovered that traveling by train — direct from city center to city center, without the time-consuming hassle of getting to and from an airport and the wasted hours there — can be almost as quick as flying and a lot more enjoyable.

The Eurostar train through the Channel Tunnel transformed journeys between England and France when it was introduced in 1994. Boarding a train at St. Pancras in central London and disembarking at Gare du Nord in Paris is enormous fun, and aside from the many business travelers, more people than ever are making the trip for just that reason — fun. Passengers made 280,000 journeys on the London-Paris route in 2024, a record. There are now plans to connect to the wider European high-speed network, enabling direct journeys from London not just to Paris but on to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille, and Turin and Milan in northern Italy.

You might be asking, what does any of this have to do with our part of the world? My answer is another question: where is the Middle East’s integrated passenger rail network?

Now, it may be argued that it is all very well for Europeans with their fancy railways, they’ve been doing it for 200 years. The first steam train carrying passengers on a public railway traveled between Stockton and Darlington in northeast England in 1825.

But in truth, this region was not far behind. In 1900 the Ottomans began construction of the 1,320 kilometer Hijaz Railway from Syria to Saudi Arabia, and the first train from Damascus rolled into Madinah on Aug. 22, 1908. Sadly, there were not many more. The First World War and sabotage attacks during the Great Arab Revolt (thanks, Lawrence of Arabia) intervened and the line was effectively out of commission by 1920, although remnants still function internally in Syria, Jordan and Israel.

Since then, rail transport in the Middle East has hit the buffers. The Gulf Railway — a proposed $250 billion line reaching nearly 2,200 kilometers from Kuwait to Oman via Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE — is no farther forward now than when it was approved at the GCC summit in December 2009. The original deadline for completion was 2018, so that’s going well. It is a colossal failure of both imagination and cooperation.

Last week Kuwait signed an $8 million design contract with a Turkish company for the Kuwaiti segment of the railway, covering 111 kilometers to the Saudi border. If previous progress is any guide, that will be where it ends — but at least the Kuwaitis are doing something. In January 2016, when the UAE suspended the tendering process for its section of the Gulf Railway, a government minister explained: “You simply cannot build your part and wait for others to start.”

I beg to differ: that everyone else is doing nothing is not a good reason to do nothing oneself. Saudi Arabia already has the small beginnings of a rail network, if limited. It should be expanded, with a Riyadh-Jeddah line a priority. The UAE has ambitious plans for Etihad Rail, although that has all the hallmarks of a network built for freight and the oil industry, with passenger capability bolted on as an afterthought.

Nevertheless, those Gulf states that invest in their own passenger rail infrastructure would encourage the laggards, efficient public transport being a key driver in attracting people to live and work. And with trains running in all the GCC states, linking them up into a genuine Gulf Railway would be so much easier.

Imagine the station announcement in Kuwait City: “The next train departing from Platform 2 is the 14:50 to Muscat, calling at Ras Al-Khair, Dammam, Bahrain, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Al-Ain and Sohar … all aboard.”

Well, why not? Get on with it!

• Ross Anderson is associate editor of Arab News.