Contribute to more connected cities

Getting round the city more quickly and more easily, from home to work or from one district to another, and traveling to other cities are needs shared by the inhabitants of many categories of cities.

To make journeys in town easier, we supply solutions that are used to build solid, sustainable and easy-to-maintain infrastructure.

Throughout the world, our cements, aggregates and concretes help make cities better connected: they are used for building the tram and metro lines, highways and railways, bridges and tunnels, ports, stations and airports that keep people moving and help inhabitants save time every day.

On the very biggest projects, we mobilize all our logistics and scientific resources to provide continuous delivery of our special purpose products in large quantities, when necessary on a 24/7 basis.

Every day, 3.5 million people in Cairo take one of the city's two metro lines. To improve service to the Egyptian capital, we are involved in building a third line which will allow a further 1.8 million to cross the city more easily when it is fully open in 2019.

Not only is Cairo the largest city in Africa, with a population of 15.5 million, it is also the only city to possess a metro. Every day, 3.5 million inhabitants travel around the city on the two existing lines.

To improve coverage of the needs of this severely congested megalopolis of 15.5 million people, the local authorities decided in 2007 to construct a third line. The first five stations came into service in 2012 and the second section is currently nearing completion.

For these first two phases of this gigantic project, we supplied the consortium responsible for construction, in which the two leading participants are Vinci and Bouygues, with approximately 900,000 m³ of concrete of several types:

• high-strength,
• ultra-impermeable,
• and self-placing filling concrete and filling mortar.

As a result, Cairo's inhabitants can already reach the center of the city more quickly and more easily from the east of the city, and vice versa.

Construction of the other portions of line 3 will continue until 2019. When it is complete, it will stretch over 33 kilometers and will enable 1.8 million passengers to cross the city from east to west, from the international airport at Heliopolis to districts on the other bank of the Nile.

The vast program seeking to relieve traffic congestion in Greater Cairo doesn't end there: another two metro lines are due to be built by 2022.

Since December 2012, there's something new in the daily lives of the residents of Casablanca. They can now travel rapidly, easily and comfortably around their city thanks to a brand new tramway line. This practical and attractive amenity, which blends perfectly into its surroundings, is another success for Lafarge!

No more overcrowded buses and congested roads in Casablanca! Make way for the tram! Since the end of 2012, the 3.6 million inhabitants of Morocco's largest city can take the brand new tram line across the city. Surrounded by palm trees, line no. 1 is 31 kilometers long, running from east to west through 48 stops which link the city center with both the university area and the popular district of Hay Hassani. The line is ultra-modern, as are the air-conditioned carriages supplied by Alstom.

A stakeholder in the project from the design phase, Lafarge supplied several types of concrete to the principal contractor, each corresponding to a specific need:

• self-placing concrete to support the line at the level of junctions (60,000 m³),
• decorative Artevia® concretes to pave the central portion of the tram line, the pedestrian areas and the junctions, a surface area of more than 62,000 m². 

Lafarge delivered the concretes continuously on a 24/7 basis throughout the entire period of construction, enabling the process to be completed in the record time of 30 months. "We have never seen that before!" commented Pierre Mongin, CEO of the RATP, operator of the network.

After just a few months, the tramway is already proving a great success: between 250,000 and 300,000 people use it every day!