When ships stalled, trucks rolled — but what about rail? The regional disruptions around Hormuz have forced a rerouting of trade flows, with cargo diverted to Red Sea and Omani ports and pushed inland via trucks — and to a lesser extent, rail.

Why this matters: The war is forcing a real-world stress test of the GCC’s logistics — and exposing the gap between its strategy and infrastructure. Rail has been pitched as the region’s resilience play, a landbridge that could bypass chokepoints like Hormuz.

Rail shows up — but lightly

Rail moved: Earlier this month, the UAE’s Etihad Rail ran more than 100 freight trips over nine days, moving some 459k tonnes — around 7.9k containers — while adding extra daily services to ease congestion at inland terminals. In Saudi Arabia, regulators issued new licenses to Saudi Arabia Railways to expand container-train operations across additional routes, building on a baseline of some 2.5k TEUs per day and linking eastern ports to Jordan.

But here’s the core imbalance: Even as cargo diverts to ports like Fujairah, Sohar, and Khor Fakkan — or gets rerouted via Red Sea gateways like Jeddah — the inland leg is still largely handled by trucks, not trains. Containers are moving hundreds of kilometers by road into GCC markets, because cross-border rail links either don’t exist or don’t connect where they need to. “The region still depends heavily on road transport for intra-GCC freight,” CEO of Elite Co. Hisham Albahar said.

The system is not built for it

Not built for a rail-led response: The GCC lacks a continuous, high-capacity rail corridor that can function as a bypass to Hormuz. Missing links remain, with no railway connecting southern Omani ports to UAE markets — till now — forcing cargo onto long-haul trucking routes across the Empty Quarter. Port-to-rail integration is also limited — key Red Sea gateways still rely on inland dry ports rather than direct ship-to-rail transfer.

It looks promising though: The Hafeet Rail link — connecting Sohar Port to the UAE’s network — expects trial operations by 2027. The project will tie together passenger routes, ports, and freight hubs, with freight trains designed to carry up to 193k TEUs per year, replacing hundreds of trucks per trip while cutting transit times by up to half.

But nothing beats maritime: Even at full tilt, current rail systems move thousands of containers per day, while a single large container vessel carries tens of thousands in one voyage. The UAE’s 7.9k containers over nine days is meaningful operationally, but negligible compared to monthly port throughput measured in mns. Saudi’s network was designed for steady growth in bulk and industrial freight, not for absorbing sudden shocks in containerized trade.

The signal

What we are seeing instead is a layered response: Ships reroute where possible, ports redistribute flows, trucks carry the bulk inland, and rail steps in where it can to ease bottlenecks. It’s a portfolio approach under stress, with each mode playing a role.

Why rail hasn’t broken out comes down to timing: The projects that would make it decisive — Saudi Arabia’s landbridge, the UAE’s full Etihad Rail network expansion, and the long-discussed GCC Railway — are still years away from completion. They were designed as future resilience infrastructure.

What this means: Rail is not absent, but it remains too limited to matter at scale. While the uptick is real, it is marginal — driven by tactical adjustments rather than a systemic shift. The Gulf didn’t pivot to rail; instead, it leaned on trucks and rerouted shipping, with rail filling in where it could. However, this push isn’t starting from zero, as rail investment across the GCC was already accelerating before the war. What changed is urgency.

What’s next? Resetting priorities. If the war persists, we can expect incremental increases in rail usage — more trains, more routes, more integration with ports. But the real shift is longer term; expect acceleration in the projects that could turn rail into a genuine alternative corridor.

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