At least $328bn worth of transport-related projects in the Mena region was awarded between 2006 and 2015. These include projects across ports, seaports, roads and rail in 17 countries.

As it stands, road contracts* accounted for 47 per cent, or $154.0bn, of the total value of transport projects awarded during the past decade.

Roads are followed by rail, at $108.6bn or 33 per cent of the total, and airports, at $45.8bn. The value of airport projects, it must be noted, largely does not include capital expenditure on technologies mainly associated with retrofits such as air navigation, security and surveillance and ICT, among others.

Some $400bn worth of transport projects are currently planned. More than half of this value (55 per cent) is accounted for by rail, followed by roads (23 per cent).

The shift from road to rail projects as far as the planned transport masterplans are concerned signals an important shift in vision and strategy.

Investing more dollars in rail than in roads means the region is investing - or at least it plans to invest - its way out of car-dependence, unsafe roads, and congested cities.

Ironically, the lower oil price era is forcing oil-dependent countries in the region – most of who have the largest and most ambitious rail projects – to phase out fuel subsidies in order to boost and diversify their revenues, and sustain most of their projects, hopefully rail included. To the consumer, this means paying the real – slightly higher – fuel price at a time when fuel prices elsewhere is declining.

While the long-term view is comforting for rail suppliers, the short-term view not so.

It would be so easy, one consultant says, for some decision-makers to pull off the plug on any of the rail projects especially if the socio-economic benefits of such projects are not effectively driven home. “It is possible that a lack of funding changes their mind on the acceptability of a project,” the consultant tells MEED.

And so while everyone grapples with the overwhelming uncertainty of rail projects being awarded over the short-term, suppliers are taking comfort from other sources of potential opportunities. “We need to focus on the post-build era, after all the operations phase of most of the projects has been largely overlooked due to the dominance of the design-and-build model, which is not exactly the most efficient way to procure a project with half-a-century life cycle…”

The other potential opportunity lies in optimising the use of technology and innovation to make the most of these multi-billion dollar investments. Anything at all that will make them run efficiently so they could cover the cost of operations and not drain public funds. Doing so would strengthen the business case for these projects and make them less likely to be assigned a lower priority from a fiscal review perspective.

This brings the case for intelligent transport systems (ITS) and the use of big data into the picture. A well developed and integrated transport masterplan, one consultant tells MEED, is what a commuter will appreciate, more than a fancy viaduct or train station. “At the end of the day, all they care about would be getting from point A to point B on time and with ease.”

This means there is enough work to keep the suppliers busy until new rail projects are released to the market, which everyone hopes will start by the second half of 2016.

*These figures are based mainly on data from regional projects tracker MEED Projects. These figures, particularly for roads, would have been much higher if the total value of streets and utility network contracts were taken in full. Instead, only half of the value of these contracts were considered due to the strong presence of utility components such as telecom and gas facilities associated with street projects.