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Consortium Wins Mecca Rail Project | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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RIYADH (AFP) – A Saudi-French-Chinese consortium has bagged the 1.8 billion dollar civil works contract for the Mecca-Medina high speed railway, a project official said on Saturday.

The Al-Rajhi construction group together with France’s Alstom and China Railway Engineering won the 6.8 billion riyal (1.8 billion dollar) contract, an official of the Saudi Railways Organisation told AFP, declining to be named.

The civil works contract is the first stage of a six billion dollar plan to build a 444 kilometre (275 mile) high-speed railroad linking the two Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina through the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.

The project aims to ferry hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Mecca and Medina at speeds reaching 360 kilometres (225 miles) per hour.