Greater Cairo is the biggest Arab city in population and area, and ranked the seventh globally in terms of population (20 million and 901 thousand, est. 2020), and also representing 20 % of the total population of Egypt. So it’s the most populated cities in Egypt, as well as thousands of people come daily from other governorates to Cairo because of their work inside Cairo or finishing their personal interests or treatment where are many of services and governmental agencies and major hospitals.

So the Egyptian government takes parallel measures to improve the network of transportation to cope with population increase in the city and cover its requirements. So the government began to think of the subway as one of the solutions to the traffic crisis in the Egyptian capital.

The first phase of line one started in 1982 and ended on October 1, 1987 and the second phase on April 12, 1989 to connect the industrial zone and Helwan University with the commercial area in downtown Cairo and the north-east area of Cairo which extended to El-marg with 42km long.

It also connected with main lines of south & north railways by Al-shuhdaa station (formerly known as Mubarak) and Suez / Ismailia line at Ain Shams station and the El-marg line / Shebin al-Qanater / Qalyoub at the El-marg station.

The Egyptian government started in supporting the subway because of increasing the population and public transport problems by establishing a second line linking Cairo to Giza and Qalyubia governorates and linking the Shubra Al-Khaima Railway Station with the Giza Railway Station.

So line two was constructed from Shubra al-Khaimah station to Giza, passing by two transmission stations: Al-shuhdaa station "Ramses" and Anwar El Sadat "Tahrir".

In order to meet the demands of transport it has begun establishing the line three of the subway to connect east of Cairo with its west, with a transmission to the first line at Gamal Abdel Nasser station and line 2 at the station Attaba, in order to reduce the surface traffic of other means of transport by 2 million trips / day, and save the journey time through a year amounted to 564 million hours for all means of transport.

It’s planned establishing other 3 lines to absorb the increase
The Fourth Line from 6 of October to New Cairo
The Fifth Line from Nasr City to Elsahel
The Sixth Line from El Khosous to New Maadi