WATANI International
8 March 2009
I invite Alexandria governor General Adel Labib and Transportation Minister Mohamed Mansour to pay a visit to Alexandria’s famed Sidi Gaber railway station. Such a visit can serve the double purpose of inspecting the large project that is being carried out there, and checking on the passenger movement at this vital station. I only hope that this visit would not be an ‘official’ one, nor would it be a ‘surprise’ or a ‘media’ one. But would rather be a personal visit by each of the officials, and preferably incognito.
A day-long business trip took me to Alexandria last week. I took the train as the swiftest and safest method of transport to Alexandria. I had been forewarned that construction work at Sidi Gaber had necessitated the extension of the old platforms further out of the station, but this extension was not enough to cover the length of the entire train. When the train stops, I was told, the platform cannot be accessed from all the doors, so the passengers have to move to carriages whose door can access the platform, to get out. This naturally results in chaos and crowding, and the slower passengers may not even make it to the doors before the train moves out of the station. Since the person who cautioned me had been talking of first hand experience, he related how an old woman he tried to help reach the door could not make it and had to use a mobile phone to inform her son, who was waiting for her at Sidi Gaber, that she could not disembark and that would he meet her at the next station?
I was thinking of all this as my train approached Sidi Gaber. True enough, we were greeted with construction work at its most industrious, with iron and wooden beams and joints jutting out of everywhere, mounds of earth dug out and heaped around, and workers in full force. The train passed through, slowed down, and stopped. As we got out I looked for the tunnel to cross to the other side but found none. Instead, all the passengers stood by, waiting for the train to leave the station so they could then cross over to the other side. Old and young stood in the biting cold, under the pouring rain, waiting to cross. Just then another train came in the opposite direction and the crowd groaned; it meant their wait in the cold and rain would be prolonged further. I couldn’t help the vicious idea of what would happen should one train leave and a third come in? But, thankfully, this did not happen; both trains left the station and the crossing procedure began. Men and women, some carrying babies and all carrying luggage, as well as children, all rushed to cross to the other side. The more weak, or more sedate, in the crowd waited their turn to go through some narrow slope then up a narrow staircase to the other side, while the more able-bodied young people lost patience and jumped down the platform to the rails and up again to the other side. I was astounded that this was the genius of a solution those in charge could come up with to such a predicament. Was it out of the question to set up a simple pedestrian bridge to serve the purpose? Did the safety of the people warrant no better measure than the present shoddy one?
Amid all the bustle, I spotted a lone man standing by, carrying a sign of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA). I then remembered that the Bibliotheca received countless visitors and luminaries all the time, from Egypt and abroad, and could not imagine that they were made to pass through the train experience at Sidi Gaber. This week the BA is holding a conference on Arab reform; did the visitors arrive through Sidi Gaber?
My message to General Labib and Mr Mansour is that, if this is the utmost of safety and comfort that can be offered at Sidi Gaber until the construction work is over, why don’t they close down the station temporarily and have passengers use the main Alexandria railway station instead? This may obviously result in overcrowding at the main station, but it is definitely better than waking up one day to news of some tragic accident at Sidi Gaber in which so many lives would be lost. I am sure officials would then rush to the scene of the tragedy and hasten to announce that a pedestrian bridge would be directly built at the site to avoid any future accidents. As though this were a stunning innovation Egyptians had never been aware of.
