A man stands watching the newly-opened Holy Sites metro light rail in the western Saudi city of Mecca on November 2, 2010. (AMER HILABI/AFP/Getty Images)[/caption]
One evening a few years ago, four of my Saudi friends, sitting in a garden in Riyadh, were musing about the future of their country—not about diversification of the economy, or relations with Iran, or finding jobs for young people, but about the quality of life in the kingdom’s teeming cities. In two or three decades, they wondered, would the cities be orderly, well-organized population centers like those of Europe? Or would they be shabby agglomerations like Cairo or Lagos, pockmarked by slums and unfinished buildings? They understood that for all its wealth, Saudi Arabia’s urban centers, where most of its population now lives, are a mess, choked with traffic, littered with trash and rubble, seemingly built without regard to planning or basic services. If the Saudis wanted to claim what they see as their rightful place among modern nations, they would have to clean up their cities and impose some discipline on those who build and live in them.
The conversation was sparked by a visitor who had just arrived from sparkling Dubai, right next door to the Kingdom. He had been especially impressed by Dubai’s efficient public transportation network, featuring well-organized bus lines with air-conditioned bus stops and a new, comfortable, easy-to-use metro rail line whisking travelers across the cities.
The contrast with Saudi cities was all too clear. At the time, the big urban centers in the Kingdom were virtually without public transportation other than taxis. Riyadh has a network of rust-bucket buses used by foreign laborers, but nothing that would be used by a university student or a bank manager—to say nothing of women. Dependence on the motor vehicle is nearly total, and every Saudi city suffered from the effects of this, including air pollution, excessive consumption of gasoline, stop-and-go traffic at all hours, and an appalling number of road accidents.
Starting from scratch in the 1950s, Saudi Arabia has built every structure and utility network found in modern nations—roads, airports, hospitals, schools, roads, factories, and utility and water lines—except public transportation. It was the automobile age; American cities were abandoning trolley lines and passenger rail in favor of the motor vehicle, so why should the Saudis do differently?
Now, just like Los Angeles, Saudi Arabia has seen the error of its ways. A new era of urban rail transit is coming. Mecca already has an elevated line, built by Chinese contractors, to serve the faithful who make pilgrimages to the city throughout the year. One news report estimated that the rail line will remove more than 50,000 buses from the area’s roads during the peak Hajj season. That’s bad news for the bus operators, but it will make life easier for everyone else.
Jeddah is planning 180 miles (about 290 kilometers) of metro subway, tram and commuter rail, along with 470 miles (about 750 kilometers) of bus lines. Ibrahim Kutubkhana, chief executive of the project, told the trade journal Construction Week that construction of the rail lines is to begin next year and that he has a mandate to complete the project by 2020.
The most advanced new project is in Riyadh, where a groundbreaking ceremony on April 3 marked the start of construction of a six-line metro rail network that will run all the way from the airport north of the city to the old neighborhood of Batha south of downtown, and east to west across the entire metropolitan area. The Kingdom has awarded 22.5 billion US dollars in construction contracts to three foreign consortiums for this network.
One of the groups is led by Bechtel Corp. of San Francisco, which has been constructing major projects in Saudi Arabia since the middle of the past century. “We look forward to building Lines 1 and 2 of this landmark metro system, both safely and sustainably,” said Peter Dawson, President of Bechtel Civil. “We intend to partner with the local community and businesses, as well as hire and develop Saudi nationals, to successfully deliver this project.”
The trains are to be fully automated and will have separate cars for families, making the system accessible to women. As more women enter the workforce while still precluded from driving, the question of how they will get to their jobs has taken on greater urgency.
In Riyadh’s central core, the trains are to run underground in tunnels that will be built along such major thoroughfares as Olaya Street and King Abdullah Road, guaranteeing years of traffic disruption that will make things worse before they get better. But when it is complete, it will help complete the transformation of sprawling Riyadh into an up-to-date metropolis. Almost every great city, from Buenos Aires and San Francisco to Singapore and Hong Kong, has some sort of urban rail transit. Perhaps my friends can be reassured that the kingdom’s cities can some day be among those. Having a rail line does not guarantee an improved quality of urban life—Cairo has one, and life in the slums there has not improved—but it is an essential component of a successful modern city.
Blog Disclaimer: All views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, The Majalla magazine.
