The CFS and the Dubai Metro: Distant Memories and Vague Analogies

Very few modes of travel beat the glamour of traveling by train. Perhaps it’s the spaciousness of the cabins, and the ability to move around without having to buckle your seatbelt and twist your backsides between the shoulders of fellow passengers (like in an airliner). Perhaps it’s the ability to sit in the café car and watch the scenic view glides by beyond the picture windows. Or maybe it’s the allure of Aghatha Christie and her Orient Express murder mystery.

Speaking of which; did you know that Aghata Christie wrote that renowned novel in Aleppo, my hometown? She’d even stayed in the quaint Baron hotel, another good reason for me to be a fan of both trains and mystery novels.

So perhaps again, it’s not a coincidence that Aleppo is where the headquarters of the Chemen de Fer du Syrie (Syrian Railways) are located. Geographically speaking, it’s a hub, and it’s the closest major town in the Levant to Turkey and Europe. It’s where the Railways track that stretches all the way from Western Europe, peels off to the east to continue its arduous trek to Baghdad, and dips to the south to eventually reach Mecca in current day Saudi Arabia.

But the evolution of the railway business in Aleppo was organically haphazard. There is a central station on huge plot of land downtown. Alongside this station you’d find maintenance depots, the simulator building, the painting workshops, the tanks, the shunting tracks, the railway institute, etc, all smack-bang in the middle of town. The central station itself is reached through an elevated track that cuts through town. Nothing like the Dubai Metro that is elevated on proper pillars and post-tensioned slabs, it’s actually much more plain and basic than that: the rail tracks of Aleppo run on an elevated mound of earth augmented with ballast and volcanic gravel, compacted together with the weight of million trains that had trudged over them throughout the decades. To the unassisted eye, the earthwork looks like a defensive rampart that belongs to long-gone ear.

I have many friends and family who work for the CFS (Chemen de Fer de Syrie). When I was little, my uncle was an inspector, and I used to take the round trip to Lattakia with him frequently. I’d just go and come back on the same train; I wouldn’t even depart the Lattakia station. But the trip was always worth it, since the natural scenery is breathtaking along the track. It’s fascinating, although, admittedly, the good part of the route is the one that falls within Lattakia’s province....:)

Homam Al Hut is a stage actor and comedian from Aleppo. He’s a graduate of civil engineering from Aleppo University. He’d started his acting career in drama groups and party events in college. And then he’d gone to set up his own theatrical scene. He’d swept the city by surprise and awe with his ability to employ Aleppine accent at the service of comedy. Anyway, how is he relevant to the Railways business? In one scene in one of his ‘in’famous plays, he adopts the role of a German expert who’s dispensing advices to officials from Aleppo municipality. He smugly suggested that the railway track that cuts through the city should go. And that the lands on which the track runs and the central station sits should be better exploited for something else. Something more feasible or profitable or convenient to the city. The passengers? Let them disembark at the suburban station 6 km away and bring them in to the city in buses.

Homam Al Hut is a very popular guy, and he’s an engineer. So for years his suggestion, albeit delivered in a comedy set up, was a widely held belief. A Japanese expert who is, alas, not as famous, had once shattered this myth forever. A friend of mine who works for CFS told me that an expert from Jaica (Japanese International Cooperation Agency) had had a meeting once with engineers and planners from the Syrian railway, and my friend was present. Now Jaica is almost a charitable organization, it helps developing countries by giving expertise and sometimes even financial assistance if there are worthy projects. Jaica’s experts are mostly retirees, since there are no timeframes and no targets to be met; it’s whatever-you-can-do-to-help-these-struggling-countries kind of work. But nonetheless, Jaica’s experts, according to my friend, work as hard as an ambitious fresh graduate. So when this small, frail man from Japan was asked whether it was feasible to terminate the railway at the suburban station and bring passengers in by buses, he was soon on his feet pointing to projected charts he’d called on his laptop. He explained that trains are the most environmentally friendly and most feasible modes of transport. That the number of busses you’d need to transport a train-load of passengers would end up emitting more poisonous gasses, more noise, and causing more traffic than the train itself.

But the railway czars present in the meeting were incredulous and suspicious of this little man, how could they not be?! Homam Al Hot said something else!

In reality, though, the Jaica expert is right on the money. And mind you, that’s just the case with comparison between two modes of public transport. Imagine the contrasts and the disparities when comparing trains with, say, cars. There is absolutely no competition; trains would always win hands down.

And this is exactly why I’m so thrilled about the Dubai Metro. I love public transportations. I miss the times when I didn’t have to drive myself around everywhere. When you just sit back and let someone else do the driving (in Dubai Metro’s case though, the drivers are going to be computer microchips). Especially with a city like Dubai, with traffic clogging up every other road and the maniacs plundering the blacktop at night. Public transport is like: relax, submit, resign, watch and enjoy. While driving your own car around is like: honk, curse, tailgate, flash, squeeze, cut off..etc..

I’m a little disappointed though; the feeder bus route nearest to where I live is good 15 minutes walk away. I could do that in mild weather conditions, but not under the severe sun or the dusty air (which are, unfortunately, most often the case). So I'll put on my own expert outfit and dispense some unsolicited advice to the RTA, they may want to try to think of bisecting and splitting the feeder routes to cover more areas. Most of the feeders’ routes are short anyway, so instead of having one bus serving 10 blocks every 5 minutes, why not have two busses serving 5 blocks every 10 minutes? At a first glance the difference might sound marginal, but it’d really encourage the lazy and fastidious population like myself to seek the Metro instead of driving.

I have more stories to share and suggestions to make. But the post had already run long, so I'll leave the rest for another occasion. Be safe and stay tuned!

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Update1: here are two links with fascinating photos of the Orient Express. Link1. Link2. (thanks Saint)