Now we come to the question that many readers have kept in a corner of their minds from the very beginning of the book; a question which is usually accompanied, before it is even spoken, by a note of doubt: how much does all this cost? And is it possible to pay for such a dream?
That doubt is fair. But the answer, as we shall see, is both honest and — perhaps against expectation — encouraging.
Before any figure, one thing must be said honestly: the numbers given here are conceptual and approximate estimates, not exact figures. The final sum will become clear only after complete engineering studies of each section.
But let us make an agreement together: behind every figure that appears, let us see a human being whose life is transformed. For a cost, without a picture of its fruit, is only a dry number; and the fruit of this cost is growth and a better life for everyone.
The direct costs of building — and what grows out of them
The first and largest portion of the cost is the rail infrastructure itself: the laying of track, bridges, tunnels, stations, freight terminals, power and signalling installations, repair and maintenance equipment, and fire-suppression and emergency systems.
Real figures from around the world help us to make an estimate: the building of a high-speed railway upon level ground generally costs between 17 and 40 million dollars per kilometre. Maglev lines are dearer; if we take together the cost of the track itself, the stations, the ancillary installations and the technologies employed, this figure may vary from fifty to two hundred and fifty million dollars per kilometre. And tunnels and bridges are dearer still. Stations too, according to their size, vary from a few million dollars for small ones to billions for the great ones.
But what lies behind these figures? Every kilometre of rail that is planted is like a vessel bringing blood to a lifeless limb of the body of the earth. That bridge which costs millions of dollars will one day connect a farmer whose crop was rotting in his store to the world market. That tunnel which demands years and capital will bring a child born in the heart of the mountains, within a few hours, to a hospital that saves his life.
The number is the cost of steel and concrete; but what we are buying is a distance that is shortened, and a life that is saved.
Ancillary sections within the system
A living network is not rail and stations alone. Within this system many ancillary parts are needed, and these too have their cost: administrative buildings for management and coordination, accommodation for staff, hospitals and emergency centres within the network, restaurants, shops, and the other installations necessary for the daily working of the network.
And again, behind these figures, life is flowing. That staff accommodation is a home for families in which bread comes to the table and hope to the heart. That hospital within the network does not serve passengers only; it brings to the people of that region a treatment they could formerly only dream of. Every building that rises creates around itself a ring of life.
Service sections outside the system
Another layer of cost belongs to the infrastructure of access — the parts which lie outside the network itself but connect it to the surrounding world: access roads, taxi and bus and metro stands, and the connecting routes to airports, ports and city centres.
Without these intermediate links the network remains cut off from the people; like a river that never reaches the fields of the village. These are the small capillaries that carry the blood of the main artery to each individual house, and without them even the greatest network remains fruitless. These are both a cost and a source of sustainable development.
Complementary sections beyond the network
And finally, a layer of development which takes shape around the network and turns it into a pole of life: schools, hotels, cinemas, conference halls, and telecommunications infrastructure. Part of this the project builds itself, and part comes from the private and public investment around it.
It is here that a station is no longer merely a place where a train stops; it becomes the nucleus of a new town, a place where children study in its school, travellers rest in its hotel, and people gather in its halls. Out of steel and concrete, a city grows; and out of the city, life.
The grand figure — and an illuminating comparison
If we put all this together, the total cost of a network of some two hundred and sixteen thousand kilometres, over the course of several decades, comes to figures of the order of several thousand billion dollars — that is, within the range of trillions.
At first glance this number takes the breath away. But let us set it before a mirror, so that we may see its true size.
In the year 2024 alone, the world spent about 2.7 trillion dollars upon the military — that is, close to 334 dollars for every human being upon the earth, and this is the tenth consecutive year in which that figure has risen.
Let this number stay a moment in the mind: humanity spends every year an enormous treasure upon building the instruments of killing one another — in one year alone, more than is needed to build a great part of this network. If the world were to devote to this project only a portion of what it spends upon war in a few years, the whole of it would be built.
The problem, then, has never been the absence of money; the problem is the choice of priorities. We have the wealth; what we have lacked is the will to build a bridge instead of a wall. And this is a choice that lies in the hands of this very generation.
Energy: from weapon to light
Every living body needs blood, and the blood of this network is energy. A network of such magnitude, to set its trains in motion, to keep its stations lit and to turn its digital brain, needs a continuous and immense flow of electricity.
And here a question arises whose answer becomes one of the most beautiful chapters of this dream: where should this energy come from?
The first answer is plain: from clean sources. Along thousands of kilometres of its route — upon sun-struck plains, above its stations, and across windswept expanses — this network can be the generator of its own energy. Solar panels and wind turbines can supply part of this need from the very lands through which the network passes, without sending any smoke into the sky. The railway, which is itself the cleanest means of transport, can be driven by clean energy as well, and so complete the circle of cleanliness.
But for a sustained and powerful foundation — that steady current which must remain in place by night and by day and in every season — nuclear energy too will have a part. The modern nuclear plants of today can provide abundant and dependable electricity without adding any carbon to the air.
And here the story reaches a point that goes beyond technique and economics; to a place where engineering borders upon poetry.
Let us think for a moment. In the world we have left behind, thousands of nuclear warheads were built; each one a granary of death, of which one alone could turn a city to ashes in a few moments. For years these warheads were aimed at one another — the symbol of the bitterest face of man, when he places his intellect in the service of his own destruction.
But amid all this, something happened of which few people are aware, and that event is a lesson for all history.
In the year 1993, America and Russia — two long-standing rivals of the Cold War — came to agreement upon something unprecedented: a programme which they named “Megatons to Megawatts”. Under this programme, over twenty years, five hundred tonnes of weapons-grade uranium taken from twenty thousand nuclear warheads of the former Soviet Union — the very warheads which once had been aimed at the cities of America — were diluted and turned into fuel for power stations.
And that fuel supplied, for years, part of the electricity of the homes and schools and hospitals of that same country; such that in those two decades, up to about ten per cent of all the electricity of America came from material once built for its destruction. The United States Secretary of Energy at the time described it by saying that material once made to do harm had been turned into a safe and clean source of light. This was the greatest and most successful nuclear disarmament programme in history.
And America too, in a separate programme, has not sat idle: to this day it has diluted more than a hundred and thirty tonnes of its own surplus weapons uranium — the equivalent of close to three thousand warheads — and turned it into fuel for power stations and research centres.
Five hundred tonnes from one side and more than a hundred and thirty from the other; in all, the material of more than twenty-three thousand nuclear warheads has lit a home instead of destroying a city. And this is only the beginning of the road; for what has been done away with to this day is little beside what still sleeps in the storehouses of the world.
The hope is that one day all the countries possessing these weapons will take this same road and turn the fuel of their weapons into the fuel of power stations.
Now imagine this idea brought to life again, upon a global scale and in the service of the Global Rail Network. Imagine the material that sleeps in the storehouses of war, from which nothing comes but threat and terror, drawn out of the warheads and turned into a fuel that sets trains in motion, lights the stations, and brings together peoples who until yesterday were afraid of one another.
That uranium which was to have destroyed a city now lights that same city. That force which was hoarded to separate human beings now binds them together.
This is no longer merely a technical solution for the supply of electricity; it is the deepest symbol of this whole book — the embodiment of the very dream I have pursued from the preface to this point: that man can lay down the sword and make a ploughshare of its metal; that instead of building instruments of escape and destruction, he can build instruments of remaining and of flourishing.
And perhaps this is the greatest message that this project can give to the world: that the destiny of a substance — and the destiny of a civilisation — is not written within itself, but lies in the hands of those who decide what to do with it. That same uranium can be death or light; that same intellect can build a bomb or a bridge; and that same man can destroy or create.
The Global Rail Network is an invitation to choose the light.
Why this cost is possible: phased execution
Another encouraging point is that this network is not built all at once and overnight. The plan has been designed upon the basis of phased execution; step by step, section by section.
And the beauty of this gradualness is that each section, as soon as it is built, begins to breathe and to earn of itself, and takes up part of the cost of the next steps. This network is like a tree which, with the growth of each branch, gives fruit of itself and scatters the seed of new branches.
Its burden weighs upon the shoulders of no one generation and no one nation, because each generation builds only a part, gathers its fruit, and hands it on to the next.
The price of a ticket: a door that remains open to all
But this great investment is worth its while upon one condition: that it does not end in making travel expensive for ordinary people. What good is a road that is built, if ordinary people cannot afford to travel upon it?
The principle is that the price of tickets and of services should be fair and within the reach of all. And fortunately, the diversity of the network’s revenues allows the financial burden not to fall upon the passenger’s ticket alone.
In this way that same labourer, that same student, that same low-income family for whom travel was until yesterday an unattainable luxury, can board the very train that the merchant and the man of wealth board. And this is itself one of the deepest meanings of justice: that the door of the world should be open to everyone equally.
The return of capital and the true value
And it must be borne in mind that this cost is not an “expenditure”; it is an “investment” which returns.
The value of this network is far greater than the cost of building it: the revenue from carrying passengers and goods, the leasing of commercial spaces, logistical and digital services, the rise in the value of land around the stations, the sale of energy, and dozens of other sources. Capital returns from these various springs, and in the long term the economic value of the project surpasses its initial cost many times over.
This is a capital which not only returns, but grows more fruitful in returning.
A fruit greater than any figure: the transformation of life
But the greatest return is contained in no financial table. Let us for a moment lift our eyes from the figures and look at what this project does in the real lives of people.
This network, during its building and afterwards, creates tens of millions of jobs — and it must be noted that this network, unlike many industries, never sleeps. The trains are in motion twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, and the stations and control centres and maintenance teams must be at work night and day in three or four shifts. This single point alone multiplies the number of workers required several times beyond what comes to mind at first glance.
And the ancillary employment will, in my view, be greater than the employment within the network itself: the businesses and markets and services that grow up around each station, the industries that come to life when the rail arrives, and the tourism and commerce that flourish along the lines.
Every job means a family whose breadwinner goes out to work; means a young person who, instead of emigration and despair, finds a future in his own birthplace.
Regions that were until yesterday remote and forgotten awaken suddenly with the arrival of the rail: a mine that lay untouched is brought into work, a crop that rotted for want of a road reaches the market, and a land that was sleeping comes to life. Along the lines, new cities and towns take shape, new places of recreation and centres of tourism appear, and a development that was for years a wish becomes a reality.
Imagine that village girl for whom the furthest horizon of her life was formerly her own village; now a train stops a few kilometres from her house that can carry her to a university, to a city, to the world. Imagine that sick old man for whom reaching a specialist doctor was until yesterday impossible; now he is there within a few hours.
No account book can measure these things, because these are no longer “cost” and “revenue”; these are life itself — life with justice and with the equal division of what is available, for the whole of humanity.
A final word: this is not expensive; this is an investment in the future
So my message to the people and to those in authority is plain and spoken with confidence: the cost of this project, however great, is not in the least expensive.
Just as no one regards the building of roads and schools and hospitals as an “extravagant expense”, but counts it the foundation of prosperity, so this network is the foundation of a better world. The difference is only of scale, not of nature. What we invest in it today returns to us tomorrow in the form of welfare, employment, justice and — most important of all — peace.
And in truth, spending upon peace is more lasting and more profitable than spending upon war. War devours wealth and creates nothing but ruin and sorrow; but this capital settles into connection and flourishing and remains fruitful from generation to generation. What we spend today upon building this road will bear fruit tomorrow not in graveyards, but in the schools and markets and prospering homes of the people.
And this is the cheapest price that humanity can pay for a bright future.
With this chapter, the part on economics and governance and law comes to an end. We now know how this network is built, who administers it, how its ownership and profit are justly divided, and where its cost comes from and where it returns.
What remains is to speak of the road ahead — of how this dream may come off the paper and into reality.
Note: the sources and references for the chapters of this part — including the data on Islamic finance and sukuk, international governance structures such as the International Space Station and Intelsat, railway construction cost data, the world military expenditure figures from SIPRI, and the “Megatons to Megawatts” programme — are gathered in the appendix of sources at the end of the book.