Building a new city or regional rail line is expensive, but that has not put a halt to developments in the Gulf. In a ranking compiled by Statista, four of the ten megaprojects with estimated costs of at least $100 billion were in the region. They include Saudi Arabia’s Neom and King Abdullah Economic City, Kuwait’s Silk City and a railway project to connect the six GCC member states.
Together, those megaprojects show the scale of the region’s ambitions to build new industries, cities and transport links.
Neom, announced in 2017 with an initial $500 billion price tag, is perhaps the most well-known. The development in the north-west of the kingdom encompasses several projects, including The Line, a city originally envisaged as stretching 170km between mirrored walls.
The Gulf railway project is intended to make it easier to move people and goods across the region. The GCC Railways Authority has said the line is to span 2,117km, with the network scheduled to be fully operational in December 2030.
The costliest entry in the Statista ranking, however, lies outside the Gulf. Europe’s Trans-European Transport Network is listed with an estimated $600 billion. It brings together railways, roads, ports and other infrastructure across EU states, with various aspects of the project to be completed between 2030 and 2050.
But comparing those megaprojects requires some care. Building a transport network across several countries is different to constructing a new city. The figures in the ranking also represent estimated costs, rather than the money already spent, and those can change as plans evolve.
The chart captures the size of those ambitions. Whether they are delivered at the scale, cost and pace first promised is another story.
