The socio-economic well-being of urban areas depends on a well-functioning transportation system that makes it easier for people to access goods and services. Most urban areas in emerging economies are expanding in size and human population, resulting in increased demand for transportation and mobility. But urban areas of most emerging economies are characterised by high motorisation and inadequate public transportation resulting in traffic congestion, accidents and increasing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) (Pojani & Stead, 2017). There is an urgent need to ensure a sustainable mass transit system to move the growing urban population to address the current socio-economic and environmental problems associated with the transportation system in emerging economies. Urban rail (metro, tram, suburban) can be the solution.

Urban rail has many advantages; trains can move a large number of people at high speed, provide reliable services because of its spatial isolation, less GHGs when the source of energy is renewable and has a low accident rate. There has been a consistent increase of 3.5% per year in urban rail lines in emerging and low-income countries over the past decade (IEA, 2020) because of the need to efficiently transport the growing urban population. In 2018, 907.1 km of metro lines were constructed in emerging and low-income countries representing 94.5% of global new metro lines (UITP, 2019). Despite the benefits it offers, urban rail is capital intensive. For instance, the infrastructure cost of implementing light rail is about three times more expensive than a bus of similar passenger capacity (ITDP, 2017). Another major challenge for emerging economies when introducing urban rail is the many technical capabilities required for rolling stock, infrastructure, public works and IT solutions. Because they are technology latecomers, they do not possess these essential capabilities.

To facilitate urban rail introduction in emerging economies, they can either import or combine public tenders with pro-active industrial policy to gradually increase value-added. But the latter is not easy as the leaders in rail technology are unwilling to share their intellectual property. The option of domestically developing rail technology may translate into inferior products and service quality and perhaps higher transportation costs.