Shunned by the rich, Cairo’s subway speaks of economic woes

CAIRO: Cairo’s subway is perhaps the cheapest in the world. For a fare equivalent to 11 US cents, you can ride as far as you want across the overcrowded, trafficchoked Egyptian capital.

But even that feels like a burden for many of the millions who ride it each day, at a time when Egyptians are scraping to get by, their purchasing power gutted amid painful economic reforms being implemented by the government.

The 30-year-old Cairo Metro typifies Egypt’s deep economic inequalities and the large distances between classes.

Unlike subways in New York, London, Paris and elsewhere in the world where the well-off and the poor mingle to at least some extent, the passengers who push and shove in and out of Cairo’s metro cars each day are overwhelmingly poor or from the lower middle classes.

Vital for those who take it, the subway is scorned by the upper crust that does not need it. Residents of an upper-class district on a Nile island are furiously resisting having a station built in their neighborhood, fearing it will bring a flood of slum-dwellers. Despite traffic jams greeting those commuting back and forth into the city, there is no talk of extending the metro to the modern suburbs rising in the surrounding desert, where the better-off have been moving for years to escape Cairo’s urban blight.

It is also one place where Egyptians’ economic vulnerability runs head-on into the demands of reform.

The government desperately needs to get its finances in order, unable to afford the billions it spends to keep food, fuel and many services at near rock-bottom prices.

So it has reduced subsidies, while increasing fuel prices and devaluing the Egyptian pound, which fell from eight to the dollar to around 18.

Economists and foreign donors have praised the moves, which no previous government dared carry out.

But the resulting inflation — currently around 30 percent — hit hard on a population where few have room to tighten their belts. Nearly a third of Egypt’s population of 93 million lives under the poverty line, earning less than $2 a day. Many millions more hover just above the line, earning only slightly more.

In March, authorities doubled the metro fare from one pound to two.

In dollar terms, that’s actually cheaper. A year ago, one pound equaled about 12 US cents. Now after the plunge in value, two pounds are worth around 11 cents.

But for passengers, who largely earn the same salaries in pounds now that they did last year, the doubling was another painful blow.

In late June, fuel prices rose by up to 55 percent and on Thursday the government announced electricity prices were hiked by more than 40 percent.

The metro is saddled with $27.7 million in debt and runs annual losses of $11.1 million, according to Transport Minister Hesham Arafat.

Nearly 5 million people a day in the city of 18 million use the subway. Running along three lines, it is by far the fastest mode of transport, since nightmarish traffic can jam the streets at all hours day and night.

Only some trains are air conditioned, leaving people on other trains sweltering in the punishing summer heat. Commuters sometimes face 15 or 20 minute waits, making packed rush-hour trains even more crowded.

The subway’s trains and 61 stations are depressingly bare. There are no street performers or entertainment, hardly any shops and few ads. But there’s plenty of commerce.

Peddlers constantly hawk a wide variety of cheap goods, including eyeliners, knock-off mobile phone accessories, lighters, packets of underwear, molasses candies, toys, and — for afternoon commuters — fruits and vegetables to take home.

Commuter Dina Abel-Fetouh said she loves the metro. “Cairo traffic makes me angry, nauseous and it’s a waste of time,” she said.

“I think I would have quit my job had it not been for the metro.”