International Railway Journal

[upbeat music] Well, welcome to this edition of Rail Group On Air.

This is the podcast series brought to you by Railway Age, Railway Track and Structures, and International Railway Journal.

I'm William C. Vantuono, I'm editor-in-chief of Railway Age.

My guest, uh, for this session is Anil Bhatt, who is Executive Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Officer at Norfolk Southern.

Now from Dubai's Al-Yalilis station, the journey to Abu Dhabi takes around 64 minutes with tickets from just 39 dirhams.

But the big question is, how does this network rank against other rail projects elsewhere in the world? And what should the UAE be thinking about next? Well, Kevin Smith is editor-in-chief of the International Railway Journal and has spent years reporting on rail networks from across the globe.

And he explained to me how big a moment this is for the UAE.

I think this is a really big moment.

You're not going to see it.

train there next year but within the next five to ten years certainly I think that things like that will happen and you know this area of the world things do happen reasonably quickly so yeah I expect that to move ahead and I'm sure we'll be talking about that at some point in the future.

Kevin Smith there editor-in-chief of the International Railway Journal.

We have been sort of on the roads, I think, you know, sort of in the corporate sphere for the last hour discussing a new survey that's out looking at resilience and well-being in the UAE.

You know, when this gold line in Dubai opens in 2032, it's expected to become an interchange between the metro lines as well.

Kevin Smith, the editor-in-chief of the International Railway Journal, told us that it will be a key component of whether this service is a success.

It's all about integrating the station, the last mile journey.

You're not necessarily going to the station in Dubai or into Abu Dhabi as your final destination, so you want the connectivity from there.

That's due to open in 2030.

Trains will travel up to 350 kilometres an hour, so a lot faster.

the passenger service that is starting in dubai next week is slower and the journey is expected to take around an hour here's kevin smith the editor-in-chief of the international railway journal again explaining how the trains will work

it's a diesel train so it's it's not electrified it's not high-speed rail it's not the mecca medina service in saudi arabia for example which goes up to i think about 320 kilometers an hour i think the maximum speed here is 200 kilometers an hour It's more comparable, I'd say, to a mainline train in Britain where the maximum speed is 125 miles an hour, 200k.