Trouble underground
Once considered public transport's brightest star, the underground metro system has recently been feeling the public's heat. Reem Nafie investigates
The underground's third line, whenever it actually comes to fruition, will vastly expand the metro's reach
When Cairo's first underground metro line opened in 1989, it immediately picked up the deserving reputation of being the country's best source of public transportation. Generally speaking, the metro was fast, clean and on time, its stations models of civility and order.
In the past few years, however, things have changed. Complaints about the underground have begun appearing more prominently in the press. Transport authorities, meanwhile, have tried to respond to the growing problems by implementing multi-million pound projects in an attempt to cope with what has gradually become a serious problem.
With summer in full swing, the poor state of ventilation on the trains themselves has come into sharper focus, as have other problems related to the underground's cleanliness, maintenance and scheduling. The presence of greater numbers of beggars and vendors at the stations and on the trains has also served to tarnish the metro's once pristine reputation.
The older of the two metro lines -- Al-Marg-Helwan -- has borne the brunt of the public's wrath.
"I have been taking the metro for 10 years now and it's only gone from bad to worse," said Ahmed Ismail, a civil servant on his way from Tahrir Square to Saray Al- Qobba on the underground. "Now that it's summer time the heat in the station and inside the trains is unbearable. I don't know why the government doesn't repair the fans."
Between a third and a quarter of the fans on the Al-Marg-Helwan line do seem to be malfunctioning, or not working at all. Resolving that situation is the impetus behind a three-year, LE12 million project that aims to install new fans to replace the nonfunctioning ones.
Magdi El-Azab, who heads the National Authority for Tunnels (NAT)'s Metro Operations Division, told Al-Ahram Weekly that "of course we realise there are problems with the metro, but don't forget that 17 of the Al-Marg-Helwan line's 46 trains are more than a decade old, which means the facilities are certain to have deteriorated."
El-Azab and other underground metro officials, however, had no explanation for why they hadn't been maintaining the fans all along, rather than waiting for them to break down completely before attending to the problem.
Dealing with another major passenger complaint -- the steadily deteriorating levels of cleanliness at both the stations and on the trains -- is also on the authority's agenda. LE10.5 million is currently being spent on a beautification project meant to restore all the stations on the Al-Marg-Helwan line to their original, pristine condition. "The Kobri Al-Qobba, Saray Al-Qobba and Al-Zeitoun stations have been revamped already, with the restoration of the rest of the line's stations set to be completed in two months," El-Azab said. The project includes expanding the stations' entrances to help deal with increased traffic, as well as refurbishing facades, footpaths, and the stations' floors and walls.
Complaints about the increasing presence of beggars and vendors inside the trains, nagging people to buy tissues and chewing gum, may be a bit harder to resolve. Maha Hamdi, a political science student, told the Weekly that, "little girls beg me for money on my way into the metro and when I don't give them anything, they ride with me, and bug me all the way home. I end up giving them a pound so they'll leave me alone." A woman sitting beside her on the train chimed in with a story about how shocked she was to have once seen "an old woman selling bread on the metro".
El-Azab denied claims that there were beggars on the trains. "Maybe at station entrances, but never in the trains," he said. "We can't do anything about beggars on the street, so it's not our fault there. But in any case, we have asked the metro police to be on the watch for beggars or vendors in the stations or on the trains."
Although there were indeed several people selling tissues and begging outside many of the stations visited by the Weekly, none could be seen on the trains themselves.
Another frequent passenger gripe related to the increasingly frustrating delays in the trains' schedules. "I use the metro to go to school in Ghamra," said secondary school student Madiha Saleh. "A few years ago a metro used to come through every few minutes, but now I have to wait 15 minutes for one to arrive." The problem, of course, is that when fewer trains arrive, they tend to be much fuller since more people have been waiting at the station for them.
With each of the underground metro's two lines designed to transport 60,000 passengers per hour in each direction, delays can be problematic for great numbers of people. In El-Azab's opinion, the blame for this, however, does not lie with the authority itself. "Not everything is our fault," he told the Weekly. "These delays are usually due to people forcing the doors open, which results in a jam. And if the metro is delayed at each station for just 30 seconds as a result, that adds up to a 9-minute delay by the time the train gets to the last station on the line. That's why people think there are less trains, even though that's not the case." El- Azab's advice was that "people should be more careful with the doors and if they miss the train they should wait for the next one, and not force the door open."
Plans for the Greater Cairo Metro Network, conceived and approved by the government in 1973, included three lines, two of which -- Al Marg-Helwan and Shubra Al- Kheima-Giza -- are currently in operation. The third line is meant to connect Darassa in the east of the city to Imbaba in the west, via Attaba, Boulaq and Zamalek.
A much-ballyhooed 34-kilometre- long fourth line -- meant to run from Imbaba all the way to Cairo Airport -- as well as a fifth and sixth line from Nasr City to Shubra Al-Kheima and Maadi, respectively -- also remain in the pipeline.
According to a high-level transport source who preferred to remain anonymous, "this large-scale plan will cost LE9.7 billion, the funding for which is not available right now. It will have to wait until we have the appropriate moneys."
Meanwhile, NAT studies have concluded that within the next few years, greater Cairo will require a tremendous increase in public transport facilities to cope with its rapidly growing population's transport needs. Solutions that seem to be on the cards for now include extensions on the currently existing lines, including an additional 2.6 kilometres and two more stations on the Shubra Al-Kheima-Giza line, taking it all the way to Al- Mounib.
Commuters are somewhat sceptical, however, about the idea of adding extra lines when problems clearly need to be solved on already existing ones. "I hope the government doesn't waste its money on constructing new lines," said private sector employee Magdi El- Assiouty, "when the existing ones still have all these problems. That's what they should focus on instead." El-Assiouty and others said that in any case, there had already been too much talk of a third line, without any clear evidence of action being taken to actually establish it on (or under, as the case may be) the ground.
