Etihad Rail's Dubai to Abu Dhabi high-speed service on fast track to success

The 350kph electric line could spur international investment and further development, say experts

The high-speed rail service aims to cut travel times between Abu Dhabi and Dubai to 30 minutes. Victor Besa / The National

The recent trip by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, on an Etihad Rail service between Dubai and Fujairah represented another step forward for the UAE’s public transport infrastructure.

Services on the nationwide rail network are set to begin next year, but Etihad Rail has another, potentially more exciting, scheme in the works.

The 350kph electric high-speed line between Dubai and Abu Dhabi was announced in January. The high-speed rail service aims to cut travel times between Abu Dhabi and Dubai to 30 minutes.

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While no launch date has been revealed, experts believe the project could revolutionise the UAE's economy, its environment and where its people will live. Six stations are to be built in the first phase, including Abu Dhabi’s islands, the city airports and Dubai Creek.

High-speed rail has had a chequered history in other parts of the world, with some projects suffering delays, cost overruns and cutbacks, but analysts believe the UAE is ideally placed to roll out the technology, with the geography, absence of planning bottlenecks and even climate expected to keep the project on track.

Dr Alexander Wray, a transport researcher at Western University in Canada, said the scheme meets the first prerequisite for successful high-speed rail: connecting major population centres.

“From the UAE’s perspective, it’s an ideal rail-building environment,” he explained. “It’s relatively flat, relatively stable ground, once you get below the sand, and it’s in a reliable weather environment. Yes, it’s hot, but you’re not dealing with the ice and corrosion that you typically would deal with in some of the other climates of the world.”

He believes the nature of the development that has already taken place in the area will make it easier to install high-speed rail. “The Abu Dhabi and Dubai region has been inhabited for millennia, but there’s not much urban fabric between the two that you’re having to deal with, in comparison to a lot of European cities where there’s an historical preservation issue or complex topography,” he said.

Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, and Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, inspect the UAE’s first passenger train fleet. Photo: Abu Dhabi Media Office

Etihad Rail has announced plans for a high-speed passenger rail service between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Photo: Abu Dhabi Media Office

Sheikh Khaled on one of the trains. The service will cut the journey time between the emirates to 30 minutes. Photo: Abu Dhabi Media Office

Inside one of the carriages. The trains will travel at up to 350kph. Victor Besa / The National

Sebastien Mangeant, executive director of high-speed rail at Etihad Rail, ha said the service will support tourism. Victor Besa / The National

Inside one of the passenger train carriages. The high-speed trains will help to reduce traffic between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Victor Besa / The National

Plans are also in place for a railway connecting the UAE with Oman. Victor Besa / The National

“If you look at the motorway corridors in the UAE, they’re quite wide to enable future infrastructure investment. They’re built after the American interstate model of motorway corridors that provision sufficient space to travel between cities.”

Why projects can hit the buffers

Some other high-speed rail projects have faced headwinds because the natural or built environment is less conducive to installing a long, straight railway line.

The UK’s struggles with HS2, originally due to run from London to Manchester and Leeds in the north of England, illustrate the problems.

Planning issues and the heavy cost of building tunnels and other features to reduce the environmental impact of the line have led to delays and cost spirals to the extent that the project has been cut back and will now only run between London and Birmingham. Lengthy consultations with affected residents have also caused delays.

There are high-speed rail services in fewer than 30 countries, just over half of them in Europe, where the networks in France, Germany, Italy and Spain are among the most notable. Morocco has a high-speed line between Tangier and Casablanca, while Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Uzbekistan are among the Asian nations with high-speed rail.

All these networks are dwarfed by China, which has more than 45,000km of high-speed rail, according to the Organisation for Research on China and Asia, and is continuing to expand.

Ambitious transport vision

Algeria, Egypt, India and Thailand are among the other nations that are developing high-speed rail projects.

The Abu Dhabi–Dubai high-speed line will not be the first in the Gulf region.

Saudi Arabia opened its Haramain High-Speed Railway, which covers 450km between Makkah and Madinah, in 2018. Trains travel at speeds up to 300kph and the journey time is about two-and-a-half hours.

Many of the selling points used to market that service will also apply to the Abu Dhabi–Dubai line: a shorter journey time, no heavy traffic, a cool and comfortable experience, high safety standards and reduced carbon emissions compared to driving.

While constructing high-speed rail can have a significant carbon footprint, particularly because large amounts of concrete are used, once built it is considered a more environmentally-friendly way of travelling.

There will be stations on the electrified Abu Dhabi–Dubai line at Jaddaf, close to Dubai Creek; Al Maktoum Airport in Dubai; Zayed Airport; Saadiyat Island; Yas Island and Reem Island.

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Boosting connectivity

Prof Jon Shaw, a transport researcher at the University of Plymouth in the UK, believes the high-speed service “will be reliable and won’t be subject to traffic congestion”.

“If you can go from a meeting in Dubai to a meeting in Abu Dhabi and can do that in 35 minutes, you have got the two centres effectively functioning as one space,” he said.

High-speed rail means, he said, “more journeys per day and quicker journeys”, although he cautioned that additional stops on the line could compromise the speed objective.

Having a train that is incredibly fast is not just about getting people from one place to another quickly – it can also be about showcasing a nation’s prowess. This explains why, for example, China has a maglev or magnetic levitation train from a Shanghai airport to the city capable of more than 400kph, and why Japan’s high-speed network is fabled for its high speeds and reliability.

“It becomes a source of national pride,” Dr Wray added. “I can see in the UAE this being almost a marketing piece for tourism or for global business and brand recognition. It’s those things that drive a lot of the high-speed rail conversation.”

Dr Wray said the line could spark further global investment and confidence in the UAE, with more employees able to work in one city and live in the other.

“That tends to breed corporate confidence,” he said. “If we look at the Japanese example of high-speed rail, it’s been a catalyst for new development. In the section north of Tokyo, communities have popped up. They’re almost like high-speed rail suburbs.”