RABAT - Work on the Arab world’s first high-speed train -- stretching from the Mediterranean to the door of the Sahara desert -- could begin next year, the head of Morocco’s rail company said. The trains would travel at up to 300 kilometres (186 miles) per hour, slashing times from Tangier in the north via Marrakesh to Agadir in the south, and from Casablanca on the Atlantic to Oujda on the Algerian border.“Marrakesh to Tangier in two and a half hours -- it’s as if the country’s shrinking,” rail operator ONCF’s managing director Mohamed Rabie Khlie told Reuters in an interview. “A high-speed rail network will put us in the rail industry’s big league.”
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And Khlie said plans mooted years ago for a tunnel from Europe to Africa across the strait of Gibraltar were still on course, meaning trains may one day travel direct from Madrid to Marrakesh. “A Moroccan-Spanish committee is working very hard on this issue and it’s going very well,” he said. “We feel quite a clear willingness on the Spanish side to push things forward.”