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

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.