Some progress is already made to launch the project. Bay told a news conference that a study on eventual trans-Gulf railway network to be built at an estimated cost of $ 20bn has been commissioned recently.
Once completed, the study which has been commissioned to an international engineering consortium led by a French company, would be submitted to the GCC transport ministers in approximately six months, he said
Bay was speaking to reporters after attending a function in which he gave an inside overview about recent developments in the GCC infrastructure development with special emphasis on the railway sector to high ranking Qatari officials and businessmen.
The event was hosted by the German Near and Middle East Association in cooperation with the Qatar German Business Forum at the Sheraton Hotel.
Bay said that the project would see the construction of not only the national network in Saudi Arabia or the UAE but also linking harbours through a Gulf network.
He said that such a railway network connecting harbours in the GCC would boast freight traffic in the Gulf and improve the logistics base of the region.
The road congestions and the inland traffic from the harbors is coming to its limitation and in order to increase port operations, an efficient rail traffic cargo system once established would ease congestion in the harbours, he said.
However, the challenges for such a network is to integrate the system and form a GCC railway authority safeguarding those railways whoever is constructing them and operating them to run it basically under the same system so as to avoid the difficulties that the railway network in Europe still has today due to different signaling and telecommunication systems, he added.
