Map by ENR The North-South Transnational Corridor project aims to be the most direct link for freight shipments from Russia or Central Asia to the Persian Gulf. Related Links: The Ten Most Noteworthy Rail Projects: Overview and Related Stories Project: North South Transnational CorridorCost: $1.4 billionConstruction period: 2007-2012 Central Asian nations have been slow to establish rail links with their neighbors to the south for numerous reasons. During the era when the Central Asian nations were part of the Soviet Union, all their rail lines headed north to Russia, their major trading partner.Of the five Central Asian nations, Kazakhstan occupies
Related Links: The Ten Most Noteworthy Rail Projects: Overview and Related Stories Project: Tehran-Khosravi Rail LinkCost: $2 billionConstruction period: Unknown China, which wants to create more robust rail corridors across Asia, is offering to build a $2-billion freight rail line in Iran. If continuous railway corridors were in place and, standard-gauge track installed from end to end, containerized freight could travel from China to Europe much more rapidly by rail than it does by ship, the Chinese claim.In September 2010, Liu Zhijun, China's railway minister, and Hamid Behbahani, Iran’s minister of roads and transportation, signed an agreement that calls for building
Related Links: The Ten Most Noteworthy Rail Projects: Overview and Related Stories Benguela RailwayCost: $1.56 billionConstruction period: 2006-12For decades, the east-west, 1,344-kilometer-long Benguela Railway spanning Angola provided the shortest way to transport the Congo’s mineral riches to Europe and was the key leg of Africa’s only transcontinental route. The railway company, Caminhos de Ferro de Benguela, was also Angola’s largest employer, with a payroll of 14,000 by the 1960s. But Angola’s long civil war, from 1975 to 2002, terminated the line. Trains and repair crews were ambushed, stations bombed and bridges dynamited, and the right-of-way was mined.In 2006, the China
Related Links: The Ten Most Noteworthy Rail Projects: Overview and Related Stories Project: Harbin-Dalian High Speed RailwayCost: $14.4 billionConstruction period: 2007-11 China’s high-speed-rail building program is a bold commitment to increase passenger-carrying capacity on major routes while simultaneously freeing up other lines for additional freight service. One of the routes that is nearing completion is the 904-kilometer line linking the major port of Dalian with Harbin, the commercial hub of northeast China. The project was split into three separate construction contracts. China Railway Group Ltd. built the southernmost section, spanning 377 km from Dalian to Shenyang. China State Construction Engineering
Related Links: The Ten Most Noteworthy Rail Projects: Overview and Related Stories Project: Lanzhou-Chongqing Railway Cost: $11.3 billion Construction Period: 2008-14 Lanzhou is a city of heavy industry and petrochemicals, located on the south bank of the Yellow River in northwest China. With a population of 2.2 million, it is the capital and largest city in Gansu Province. About 800 kilometers to the south, Chongqing, a manufacturing center on the Yangtze River in Sichuan Province, is one of the largest municipalities in China, with a population of 30 million. The Qinling Mountains sit between the two. The Lanzhou-Chongqing Railway project
Related Links: The Ten Most Noteworthy Rail Projects: Overview and Related Stories Project: North-South RailwayCost: $3.5 billionConstruction period: 2007-2013Saudi Arabia, though late to adopt rail service, has embarked on an ambitious program that will feature both freight and passenger service.Its North-South Railway, a 2,400-kilometer-long branching system, will link Saudi Arabia’s northern mineral belt with smelters and a port on the Persian Gulf, enabling the country to better reach export markets. Further, passenger service will connect Riyadh with cities in the north and extend to the Jordanian border.The construction work has been divided into four phases. The Saudi Binladin Group, the
Related Links: The Ten Most Noteworthy Rail Projects: Overview and Related Stories Comprehensive National Rail NetworkCost: $5.6 billionConstruction period: 2008-12 (original estimate)Libya's civil war has halted an ambitious plan to build an extensive $5.6-billion rail system designed to bolster both passenger and freight service.The major east-west route would parallel the coast, ultimately stretching 2,300 kilometers from Ras Ejder on the border of Tunisia to Umm Sa’ad on the Egyptian border.The regime awarded separate contracts to Russian and Chinese contractors to complete certain segments. In 2008, crews from RZD, the Russian state railway, began building the 554-km Surt-to-Benghazi segment, which had
Rawabi, a planned city for 40,000 residents, is under construction in the West Bank. The first phase will encompass about 100 residential buildings between five and nine stories tall, ranging from 2,800 to 3,500 square meters, as well as schools and other public and commercial buildings. The 1,557-acre site covers the slope of a hill in Birzeit, a university town located just north of the town of Ramallah in the West Bank and 10 miles north of Jerusalem. “Rawabi” means “the hills” in Arabic. Earthmoving and road construction began late last year, and construction of the buildings began in June. The
To build Mexico’s 750-MW La Yesca hydroelectric project, the construction consortium first had to divert the Santiago River through a pair of 14-meter-square tunnels, one 830 m long and the other and 870 m. The $767-million concrete-faced rock-fill dam, with a 220-m-high crest and a length of 628 m, is on schedule for completion in 2012, according to Mexico’s largest contractor, Ingenieros Civiles Asociados, which is leading the project’s construction consortium. Work on the project—located 105 km northeast of Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco State in western Mexico—began in 2007. The workforce peaked at 5,000 in April 2011. Ingetec S.A.,
A European Union environmental regulation is prompting big changes and some uncertainty about the future at the Tilbury B Power Station, located on the Thames River, 25 miles east of London. Work is under way to convert the former 1,050-MW coal-fired powerplant, closed in March, to what would be the world’s largest biomass plant, generating 750 MW. But thanks to the regulation that prompted the plant's conversion, Tilbury’s future beyond 2015 is not yet certain, says its owner, RWE npower. Photo courtesy of RWE npower Tilbury is switching from burning coal to wood pellets as its fuel source. RWE, which