Name: The $22 Billion Railway Opening Saudi Arabia’s Doors to the World
Uploaded: 2024-04-10T04:01:00Z
Duration: 8 min 51 s
Description: With Saudi Arabia set to host the World Expo 2030 and as a frontrunner to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup, the country is banking on a new metro megaproject to help transform its economy and improve its reputation. Photo: Royal Commission for Riyadh City

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With Saudi Arabia set to host the World Expo 2030 and as a frontrunner to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup, the country is banking on a new metro megaproject to help transform its economy and improve its reputation. Photo: Royal Commission for Riyadh City

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The $22 Billion Railway Opening Saudi Arabia’s Doors to the World

Narrator: This is one of the largest metro projects in the world. Spanning 109 miles across a desert city, the $22.5 billion Riyadh Metro is an incredible feat of engineering. But this is more than just a mega project.

It's also about image building, and showing that the country is progressive. It is modern.

Narrator: For the last decade, Saudi Arabia has been investing billions of its oil revenues into engineering a legacy that will outlive the man on the throne. Now, the country is gearing up to host two huge world events, both of which would bring money, tourism, and political clout. It's a golden opportunity for the kingdom in its quest to transform its economy and improve its human rights reputation on the world stage. It also turns up the pressure to complete this massive infrastructure project that's already years behind schedule. This is Saudi Arabia's race to finish the railway that could open its doors to the world. This is the Riyadh Metro Network, six lines, 85 stations, and 109 miles of new track, stretching across a city built on sand. Most cities build something of this scale in a number of phases over a number of decades, but Saudi Arabia is turning these flashy renderings into reality in just one phase, making it one of the world's largest single-phase metro projects. That's because Riyadh is a city with big ambitions.

It's really remarkable that transformation that happened over 30 years or so. The physical environment has changed, the social structure has changed, and it's just a very different atmosphere, a very different vibe.

Narrator: In the '70s, the city used the country's oil profits to expand its infrastructure around the automobile. Riyadh has gone through some big changes since then. Its urban environment has expanded as the population has grown nearly 20 times larger, women were granted the right to drive, and international tourists can now visit. Much like in the rest of the Gulf, the city still has a strong car culture, thanks in part to how hot it is to actually walk anywhere. But if you're looking even further to the future, car-centric cities aren't really at the forefront of innovation. A new electric driverless public transit system, now, that's a forward-thinking investment. The Riyadh Metro has been in the works for over a decade, and it's helping the kingdom set some very big goals. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants to make the capital city an international business hub, which would double its population by 2030. But the world is still wary of the kingdom, which has spent decades in isolation and has been condemned for its human rights violations. If the country wants a chance to turbocharge its growth and reshape its international image, hosting a massive world event is a pretty good place to start. Saudi Arabia has been elected to host World Expo 2030, which will welcome tens of millions of tourists from more than 100 countries. It's also the front runner to host the 2034 World Cup. Both events will put Riyadh at the center of billions of dollars in construction projects, like this new stadium proposal for Qiddiya City, which is envisioned to be Saudi Arabia's new entertainment hub.

When you look at all the other mega projects that are ongoing in Riyadh right now, they are not going to make sense, whatsoever, if there is no transportation network linking these developments together. So it's a crucial element in Saudi's Vision 2030 to have the Metro actually opening very soon.

Narrator: Constructing something of this scale is challenging enough, but doing it all in the desert makes things even tougher.

It's a harsh desert climate. You would have to take into consideration the effect of heat, the effect of sandstorms, and also in the winter, it can get quite cold as well. You would have to select proper materials that can withstand the effect of these fluctuating temperatures.

Narrator: On the Riyadh Metro, the train cars had to be specially designed to account for the extreme high temperatures and sand. Contractors had to adapt the way they stored concrete outside because it was so hot that the top layer started to dry before they could pour it. Three massive tunnel boring machines were used to drill and excavate 40% of the route, which runs beneath the city, weaving around existing building foundations and utilities, and there's a law that bans some laborers from working certain hours in the middle of the day when the temperatures are dangerously high. But the physical environment wasn't the only challenge. The former governor of Riyadh was arrested in the crown prince's 2017 crackdown for alleged corruption in the Riyadh Metro Project. The 2020 pandemic caused supply chain disruptions across the industry. And in 2021, some of the main contractors on the project sent some staff home over a more than $1 billion payment dispute. Delays on infrastructure projects are pretty common around the world. It famously took New York City nearly 100 years from the time it was proposed to actually finish the Second Avenue Subway. The Riyadh Metro was originally set to open in 2019, just five years after construction began. Now, the Royal Commission for Riyadh City expects to announce the opening date of the Metro soon. But on a project like this, time is money, and Saudi Arabia has a lot of money. For the last few years, the country's national oil company has made more than $100 billion in net profits every year. A lot of that money is funneled into the country's public investment fund, which is essentially a giant pot of money that the country uses to pay for mega projects like the Metro.

I think Riyadh is offering a different approach, in a sense that it is not entirely reliant on investment from outsiders. In Dubai, a large portion of its growth can be attributed to external actors investing in the city. Riyadh and Saudi Arabia does not need that.

Narrator: Most of the Riyadh Metro's contracts were signed back in 2013. That meant architecture, engineering, and construction companies all over the world were competing for a slice of the $22.5 billion budget. In the end, more than 30 international and local firms and many more suppliers and subcontractors were selected to work on the project. Among those chosen ones were some very high-profile companies like Zaha Hadid Architects.

Well, architecture has historically always been associated with power, and there is a sort of a gravitation by architects to have projects and to enlist clients. And clearly, governments and various state institutions are the ones who have the means to provide that.

Narrator: At this point in history, a lot of big budget architecture and construction projects are being commissioned by oil-rich gulf states. While locals do stand to benefit from some mega projects, there's another potential payoff as well, international tourism and reputation building.

There is a downside, of course, because sometimes, projects like that can be a way for autocratic regimes to mask human rights abuses

Narrator: In neighboring country, Qatar, the 2022 World Cup brought a new level of global scrutiny on labor practices in the region. Thousands of migrant workers have reportedly died in the country in the past decade, though not all related to the World Cup. FIFA and Qatar's World Cup Organizing Committee have said there were three work-related deaths on World Cup stadiums. Like many countries around the world, Saudi Arabia relies on migrant construction labor. Human rights experts are concerned about the potential exploitation of a power imbalance and risks around heat stress, debt bondage, and general construction site safety. The Royal Commission for Riyadh City didn't respond to our request for comment on how its approach labor protections on the Riyadh Metro Project. Despite its promotional videos, the Riyadh Metro isn't as glitzy as Saudi Arabia's newer projects like NEOM, a futuristic city in the desert, but it is the backbone of a much bigger vision to re-engineer the country's future. Once the Metro finally opens, Riyadh will face its next challenge, getting Saudis to ditch their cars and actually use the train.

Whether that will actually transpire remains to be seen. But definitely, the underlying framework, the infrastructure is there for that to happen.