Inter-city transport

Douala-Yaounde in 3 hours by train

The new intercity speed train

The recently inaugurated intercity train that plies the Douala-Yaounde railroad is already making great impact in the transport sector. On Monday last week the new speed train that left Douala at 6 a.m. arrived at the Yaounde train station at Elig-Essono at exactly 9.30 a.m. The train thus covered the 265Km distance separating Douala and Yaounde in 3 hours 30 minutes. At the inauguration of the new train earlier on Friday 2 May 2014 by Prime Minister Philemon Yang, it was announced to take 3 hours 40 minutes to do the distance.
    The passengers who alighted from the train could not hide their joy. “This is formidable! That one can do Douala-Yaounde in 3 hours 30 minutes is something of a revolution,” said a business tycoon dressed in in ‘gandoura’.
    Another passenger noted that they could have used less than the 3 hours 30 minutes if the conductor did not slow down when they got to Ngoumou on the outskirts of Yaounde.
    And this observation is valid especially when one considers that the return journey to Douala during the inaugural journey with journalists took 3 hours 20 minutes. The train left Yaounde at 10.25 a.m. and arrived at the train station at Bessengue-Deido in Douala at 13h35.

    It is already speculated that the coming of the speed train with its undisputable comfort and safety will greatly hamper the business of the bus travel sector that until now was the major means of transport between Douala and Yaounde. The two couches that constitute the 1st class section of the train are equipped with exquisite air-conditioning apparatus. The comfort on-board, the services and clean toilet facilities give the impression one was inside an aeroplane. A journalist simply described the train as a ground plane.
The comfort in the four couches that make up the 2nd class is also worth commending.
    It should be mentioned that unlike the inter-city buses that get to the entrance into Douala and get held-up by traffic congestion, the intercity train moves straight into Douala without any hurdles.
According to authorities of the Cameroon Railway Corporation, camrail, the intercity train will do four round trips between Douala and Yaounde per day. The fare is 9000 fcfa for the 1st class and 6000 fcfa for 2nd class. The two 1st class couches have 64 seats each while the four 2nd class couches have 88 places each.

Hon Hamadou Sali

                 Reaction:
InterCity will also extend to Kumba and Mbanga
 -Hon. Hamadou Sali, Camrail Board Chair
 Camrail is very concerned about the comfort of its many passengers. The coming of the intercity train will help diversify the transport sector and greatly ameliorate the services offered by camrail. That is why the speed train will soon be extended to also involve Kumba in the Southwest and Mbanga in the Littoral. Meanwhile, the Yaounde-Ngoundere axis will also have a new train by 19 May 2014. All these actions fall within a convention of investments in the railway sector entered between the state and authorities of camrail. About 230 billion FCFA would be invested between 2009 and 2020, according to the convention.