by Marwa Yahya
CAIRO, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Egypt has jumped in the world's roads quality ranking after 5,000 km of new roads were added to the country's road network, experts said.
"Egypt has climbed from the 118th in 2014 in the global roads quality ranking to 75th in 2018," said Egyptian Minister of Transport Hisham Arafat recently.
Before Egypt implemented the national roads project in 2014, the country had only 24,000 km of roads nationwide, Emad Nabil, a professor of traffic and roads engineering in Cairo University, told Xinhua.
When the project finishes in 2020, 7,000 new roads will be added, which will represent 29 percent of the road network in Egypt.
The new roads help reduce the traffic accidents in Egypt, which, according to a government report in 2016, ranked 108th out of 185 countries in terms of annual number of road accidents.
A report by the Egyptian official statistics agency in March showed traffic accidents in Egypt declined 24.5 percent in 2017 to 11,100 cases from about 14,700 in 2016.
The report said road accidents left 3,700 people dead and 14,000 others injured in 2017, compared to 5,300 dead and 18,600 wounded in 2016.
Egypt has spent 22.5 billion Egyptian pounds (1.25 million U.S. dollars) on roads and bridges that were completed between 2014 and 2017, according to a statement from the Ministry of Transport.
Egypt has prioritized transport infrastructure construction since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced the national roads project in August 2014 to build 4,400 km of new roads.
Transport and logistics activity represented 3.1 percent of the country's GDP in the fiscal year 2015-2016, according to the General Authority for Investment and Free Zones.
In addition, improving the traffic security on the roads, as well as separating the trucks and the private cars in most of the roads, also reduced the number of accidents, Nabil said.
"Maintaining roads will be a new routine in Egypt. In the past roads were built without restoration plans," the Egyptian professor noted.
After an inspection tour for opening new roads and bridges on Sept. 10, President al-Sisi called for "reviewing the bridges after 10 years of use and ensuring the level of efficiency, maintenance and safety."
"Development in infrastructure had helped attract investments and create thousands of job opportunities," said Magdy al-Shahid, a traffic and road expert.
"Until 2014, foreign companies were pulling out of Egypt because of poor infrastructure, but now we're meeting lots of investors who are interested in doing business in Egypt," al-Shahid told Xinhua.
He believes roads are the arteries for enhancing development, and encouraging investments.
Egypt has been committed to the international quality and code criteria in building new roads, al-Shahid noted, expecting his country's further improvement in road ranking quality.
