After five years’ work and at a cost of more than a billion dollars, Senegal’s capital city next Monday will finally welcome a new commuter railway line. Politicians are lining up to extol the benefits of slashing journey times and decongesting Dakar once the gleaming TER regional express trains start to roll. But thousands of residents claim they have not been properly compensated for homes and businesses that were demolished to make way for the much-trumpeted line. “We plan to block the start of the TER on the day of the inauguration to demand satisfaction for our grievances,” said Ibrahima Cisse, who leads a group of some 16,000 people who say they are owed money. Many are also furious that the rehousing they were promised has not yet been completed. The government says that almost everyone who is owed compensation has received it, but accepts that some resettlements have not yet happened. Travelling at up 160 kilometres (100 miles) per hour, the trains will ply the 36-kilometre (22-mile) route between Dakar and the new city of Diamniadio in about 20 minutes. Supporters of the project say it will carry 115,000 people per day, saving them hours otherwise spent in the capital’s monstrous traffic jams. The time it took to build “may seem long, but we have broken records for the speed of construction, and despite Covid,” Stephane Volant of Seter, the railway’s operating company, told AFP. Critics say the true cost of the project is more than a thousand trillion CFA francs ($1.7 billion 1.5 billion euros), compared with its budget of 780 billion francs.