Transportation Sector

Airports
Roads and Highways
Railway

Transportation infrastructure along road, rail and air links is well developed. Various plans to achieve these improvements are at an advanced stage.

The transportation sector accounts for more than 10% of Jordan’s GDP. It is growing at an annual rate of 6%.The government developed a national transport strategy to upgrade the country’s infrastructure, and enable Jordan to capitalize on its natural geographical advantages.

Airports

Queen Alia International Airport (QAIA) is undergoing a 550 million USD rebuild project in 2008.A build-operate-transfer (BOT) contract was awarded to an international consortium led by “Aéroports de Paris” management. After the completion of the project, the capacity of the airport will expand from 3 million passengers to 9 million. Whereas, the cargo capacity will be greatly increased.

King Hussein International Airport (Aqaba): The National Air Services of Kuwait won a tender to equip, operate, and transfer the airport for 15 years. 15 million USD have been invested in upgrades. The cargo terminal serves as a sea-air linkage into Iraq and the rest of the region. KHIA has an Open Sky policy.

The Royal Jordanian (RJ) Airlines serves 55 direct destinations and 700 others are served by alliance airlines. It has modern aircrafts. Also, RJ became a member in the One World Alliance in April, 2007. RJ has been privatized in 2007.

RJ recently made a multi-million USD investment in the upgrade of the cargo terminal at QAIA.

Roads and Highways

Jordan has excellent road connections all over the country, connecting Jordan with all its neighboring country. It has around 80,000 km2 of paved roads and highways.

Since 2002, the Ministry of Public works and Housing started implementation of its 25 year plan which aims to complete an extensive road network around the kingdom. This includes building ring roads around major cities and development areas such as Amman, Salt and Irbid. Investments on road improvement and development are expected to reach more than 1.8 billion USD within the coming 25 years.

Railway

The Jordanian government prepared a railway master plan to build an entirely new standard-gauge railway network.

The existing railway network in Jordan consists of 620 km of narrow-gauge tracks, operated by: 

Jordan Hejaz Railway: 217 km of operational lines, and 111 km of abandoned lines. It runs 2 passenger trains per week between Amman and Damascus, and freight trains upon request. 

Aqaba Railway Corporation: 293 km of operational lines, transporting around (2.5 – 3) mn tons of phosphate from the mines to Aqaba Port.

A Light Railway BOT project has been awarded to a Kuwaiti-Spanish consortium in 2008 which will connect Amman to Zarqa, around 26 km. The project is estimated to cost 330 million USD. The electric-powered double track railway will be operational in 2011. The line will establish an effective daily passenger transport between Amman and Zarqa catering to 90,000 passengers daily commuters with prompt, frequent trips with reliability and safely.

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