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Algeria
Railroads
Railroads are a state monopoly run by the National Railroad Transportation
Company (Société Nationale des Transports Ferroviaires--SNTF),
a semi-autonomous public entity operating under the aegis of the
Ministry of Transport. The approximately 4,000-kilometer railroad
system, which is old and poorly designed, is further handicapped
by the lack of long distance traffic. Phosphate and iron ore traffic
in the eastern region is almost the only commercially profitable
freight traffic. Passenger traffic is concentrated mostly around
the major urban areas, especially the capital (see
fig. 8). A main railroad line connects major cities along
the coast and joins the Moroccan and Tunisian systems at their
respective borders. However, rail links with Morocco were closed
for twelve years as a result of tension between the two countries
and reopened only in September 1988.
SNTF has argued that rail transport is 75 percent cheaper than
road transport and that it should be developed to carry up to
40 percent of freight, as in France. The fact that the railroads
carried 53 million passengers and 13 million tons of freight in
1989 lent further credence to SNTF's ambitious US$11 billion program
to double the length and freight capacity of the existing rail
network. The expansion program includes a new line running east-west
across the Hauts Plateaux, new track, freight centers, and stations.
Although the government's austerity policy may affect the level
of investment in railroad improvement, several new lines were
under construction in 1993 and others were under renovation, including
the Jijel-Ramdune Djamal line in the northeast and stretches of
the line in western Algeria.
Funding for Algeria's railroads came from outside sources. In
1991 the African Development Bank approved a loan to finance construction
of a railroad tunnel that would cost US$130 million and take more
than three years to complete. Part of a US$211 million loan from
the World Bank in 1989 was allotted to the reconstruction of Algeria's
railroads.
An urban rail project involving work on the first twenty-six
kilometers of the Algiers subway system, which had been planned
for 1985, was begun in August 1989. The whole system is to total
sixty-four kilometers when completed in 1993-94.
Data as of December 1993
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