Metro and railway ticket prices to rise by 4Q18: The price of Metro tickets will increase to a range of EGP 2-4 by 4Q18 depending on the distance traveled on each line, up from a set EGP 2 regardless of distance traveled, Transport Minister Hisham Arafat tells AMAY in an interview. The prices of railway tickets will also be rising next year, he adds, justifying the increases with the arrival of new locomotives and the implementation of upgrades that will improve service quality. These upgrades will cost the Transport Ministry more than EGP 130 bn, according to Arafat, who said that the Cairo Metro Line 3 alone is costing close to EGP 80 bn.

Last March’s doubling of metro ticket prices had was another painful blow to Egypt’s poor, writes Hamza Hindawi for the Associated Press. His piece looks at how the metro has ended up being a burden of the government alone precisely because Egypt’s rich have shun it, and major commerce at the metro stations are limited to street peddlers.