SIEMENS

The blue-and-white train slowly rolls into the Cité Mer et Soleil station in the center of Algiers. A crowd watches its arrival with rapt attention. Many of the onlookers hold up digital cameras and smartphones to record the event. What a spectacle! Looking back on that day, Siemens engineer and head of the Algiers metro project, Stéphane Bayon de Noyer, recalls, “People were truly excited, sharing videos online and wanting everyone to know that they had a metro now too.”

And that was how Algiers, the capital of Algeria, finally opened its first metro on November 1, 2011, after three decades of planning and construction. Following the example set by Egypt, Algeria is now the second country in Africa with a subway network. In June 1981 the Algerian government decided to build three subway lines. The plan was to relieve daily traffic congestion in this city of 3.5 million people. However, work on the project was constantly interrupted, an economic crisis in the 1990s reduced progress, and poor planning also took its toll.

Siemens has operated an office in Algeria for 50 years, during which time it has focused on building power plants, pumping stations, and high-voltage facilities. The history of Siemens and Algeria, however, is much older than that. In fact, it goes all the way back to 1857, when Werner von Siemens had the first submarine cable between Africa and Europe installed. The cable ran from Annaba in Algeria across the Mediterranean to Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia.

Complex Agreement. In 2006, Siemens signed a fresh contract with the Entreprise Métro d´Alger transit authority. At that point, Siemens’ French transportation unit, the leading partner in the project, assumed responsibility for planning the new subway. The unit, which has almost 300 employees, delivered tracks, cutting-edge technology such as automatic train control and positioning systems, and provided telecommunications and radio transmission systems. French Siemens experts even delivered the ticket machines and the technology for the operations control center.

The Algerian metro is now as modern as Line 4 in Barcelona, Line 1 in Paris, and the Canarsie Line in New York. Nevertheless, Bayon de Noyer remembers that it took quite some time and required a lot of patience before the first subway train was able to speed beneath the city — the first of 14 trains to be provided by the Spanish consortium partner Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles S.A. “Implementing such a large-scale project is standard practice in Europe, but it was something new for Algeria,” he says.

For a start, Algerian and French working days had to be coordinated. The project basically started off with a three-day work week, since Thursday and Friday made up the weekend in Algeria at that time. Since then, Algeria has adopted a weekend consisting of Friday and Saturday. Another thing Bayon de Noyer had to get used to was long customer meetings that often failed to reach decisions. But these were cultural differences, he concedes. Altogether 2,000 people worked on the Algiers subway, including 1,700 Algerians, plus workers from Spain, Italy, France, Syria, and Egypt. Says Bayon de Noyer, “With all the different languages and cultures, coordinating the project has been pretty complex.”

When the opening day finally came, the Algerian president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, declared the subway to be operational and immediately tried it out himself. At the station, he was greeted by a festive crowd. Onlookers waved Algerian flags and sported traditional robes in pink, yellow or green. Bouteflika bought a ticket for 50 dinars — approximately €0.50. He took the train eastward along the coastline, where houses line the hillsides up to an altitude of almost 400 meters. In many places, the area is like an amphitheater with an ocean view. But the passengers see none of this, since nine of the line’s ten stations are located underground, often up to 50 meters below street level. The subway rumbles below the city’s botanical gardens and extends to the Tafourah Grande Poste station, the last stop. This station lies below the old merchant quarter with its famous casbah, a historic citadel dating from the 16th century, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The artifacts that were discovered during construction of the subway may date back to antiquity. At any rate, they certainly caused construction to be halted from time to time, says Bayon de Noyer. The subway line’s close proximity to the bay also caused difficulties. When seawater began trickling into the tunnel, specialists had to be called in to seal cracks, gravel pockets, and joints.

What’s more, 90 percent of all the materials and components had to be imported to Algeria, with delivery times of eight weeks on average. In order to forge ahead without additional delays, project managers had to finely calibrate the various areas of responsibility and interfaces with the client, the consortium partners, and hundreds of employees. The project’s planning software was particularly useful, as it enabled everyone to see the overlapping areas between different tasks, upload and check up-to-date construction reports, and even take weather conditions into account. As a result, Siemens was able to complete Line 1 in just a few years.

Second Line Planned. To get through the city center, residents of Algiers now need only ten minutes by subway instead of 45 minutes by car. Since parking is very hard to find in town, they can leave their cars outside the city center. All in all, the new subway can transport 21,000 passengers per hour. And more stations are being built. Siemens is already planning a second line to follow the first, which has generated so much enthusiasm. Videos on YouTube show off the new subway, and the comments underneath range from euphoric to laconic — referring to the long construction phase. But as the old adage says, “Good things come to those who wait.” After all, the first two attempts to install a submarine cable between Algeria and Sardinia failed in 1855 and 1856. It was the third attempt, led by Werner von Siemens, that succeeded.