ARAB RAILWAYS BEFORE THE CHALLENGES OF TIME

Track lines and rolling stock form a single organism that provides massive cargo transportation over long distances. He has an indisputable role in solving many economic problems, including in the Arab East. However, all national indicators that relate to the topic under consideration are highly differentiated and depend on the conditions in each specific country. Freight rail transport, although it occupies its own niche in the economic infrastructure of a number of countries in the region, is nevertheless underdeveloped or underutilized until now, since it faces competition from road communications of the same profile. Railways has received recently a more definite impetus for the development as an alternative to bus services due to the outstripping rates of population growth and the need to move passenger flows in a short time and over long distances. However, in the last decade, the demand for freight transportation has been growing, as a result of the internationalization of the international economic space and the creation of long transport corridors that connect the places of production with remote processing centers or with seaports through which markets on different continents are supplied. At least at the moment, the relatively developed Arab countries have sufficient railway potential for the implementation of these tasks, although work is already in full swing on projects related to the increase in the length and density of track lines. Arab oil exporters of the Persian Gulf are also striving to become cargo hubs for transshipment of goods and transportation of hydrocarbons and oil products. They are rapidly laying cross-border lines and crossings between the members of the GCC, although before they did not have gauge tracks at all due to short distances and the absence of the need to duplicate oil and product pipelines. Now the Arabs intend to use their geographic advantages and integrate into transport chains required by the world's largest producers.