President Macky Sall inaugurated on December 27, 2021 the new TER supposed to relieve congestion in the Senegalese capital. Commissioning has been postponed several times since the start of work in 2017.
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He was expected. The new Regional Express Train has finally been inaugurated on December 27, 2021 by Senegalese President Macky Sall. This TER must connect the 36 kilometers separating Dakar from the new town of Diamniadio in about twenty minutes and the 57 kilometers with the new Blaise Diagne international airport in 55 minutes.
Fourteen stations have been set up along the route as well as two maintenance sites at Rufisque and Colobane. The trains will run at a top speed of 160 km / h and will be able to transport 115,000 people per day, from 5 am to 10 pm. The rotations will be carried out by fifteen trainsets of four cars each, built by the French group Alstom.
The infrastructure, which cost more than a billion euros, should reduce the huge traffic jams in the West African metropolis where almost all of the country’s economic activities are concentrated. This is a section on which users usually lose hours by car. Traffic jams officially cost the city 152 million euros per year. In addition, it should allow the creation of a thousand jobs.
If government supporters present the TER as President Sall’s success, thousands of expropriated people along the route are screaming their anger and demanding greater compensation. Many of the inhabitants located in the hold of the TER in Dakar had a “precarious and revocable title deed”, according to an administrative document, that is to say spontaneous habitats tolerated but not authorized.
Relocation sites have been planned for families and traders in particular, but these developments are behind schedule. “The TER has impoverished us”, told AFP Amina Bayo, head of a collective of expropriated people denouncing a “expensive project” and claiming 76 million euros in compensation from the State, which for its part claims “to have fulfilled his obligations”. An amount of 42.8 billion FCFA (over 64 million euros) was provided for compensation. “We plan to block the start of the TER on the day of the inauguration, to demand the satisfaction of our grievances”, warned Ibrahima Cissé, president of the TER impacted collective.