Casablanca is the pivot of Morocco's MAD 96-billion rail decade: Al Boraq carried 5.6 million passengers in 2025, the Kenitra–Marrakech extension tunnels under the city to a new 12-million-passenger Casablanca Sud station, and three RER-style suburban lines will add 92 km and 18 stations.
Al Boraq — Africa's first and only high-speed service — already links Tangier and Casablanca (323 km, up to 320 km/h) and carried about 5.6 million passengers in 2025. The 430-km Kenitra–Marrakech extension, launched by King Mohammed VI on 24 April 2025, runs south through Rabat, the Benslimane stadium district and Mohammed V Airport at Nouaceur before reaching Marrakech: Tangier–Casablanca in 1h40, Rabat–airport in 35 minutes, Tangier–Marrakech in 2h40.
The extension costs MAD 53 billion plus MAD 14 billion to modernise the classic network, inside a MAD 96-billion national plan; 18 Alstom Avelia Horizon trainsets (€781 million, from 2027) will carry an expected 7.2 million passengers a year once through-services begin.
Casablanca Sud — launched by the King on 24 September 2025 — is the project's urban anchor: six platforms, ten tracks, 12 million passengers a year, interchange with tram Line 1 and buses, 700 parking spaces, MAD 700 million, due October 2027. Around Casa-Voyageurs, six tracks are being added to the cross-city corridor — two for high speed, two suburban, two classic — with blockades running to end-2027.
On top comes the RER: three suburban lines totalling 92 km and 18 new stations, serving the Grand Stade, Mohammedia and the airport, with headways down to 7.5 minutes and 41–53 million passengers a year at full capacity. Hyundai Rotem is supplying 110 double-deck EMUs ($1.5 billion); CAF adds 30 intercity trains (€600 million).
Casablanca is becoming what its geography always promised: the hinge between Africa's only high-speed network and its largest economy. For the traveller: use Casa-Voyageurs as the working hub — Al Boraq to Rabat in under an hour, Tangier in just over two — but check engineering-work timetables through 2027; from 2029 the airport LGV station makes fly-rail itineraries genuinely seamless. For the watcher: the RER is the sleeper story — 41–53 million suburban riders would transform daily mobility in a city that moves by car and tram; watch Hyundai Rotem delivery cadence and whether the single-track sections of the extension constrain capacity. MAD 96 billion is Africa's most serious rail bet.
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