Saudi Arabia and its megacity of theme parks

To the southwest of Riyadh there is a city. It is called Qiddiyah and its name, translated into Spanish, comes from a concept that could be defined as “the gardens.” It is surprising, if we take into account that looking at the satellite images of Google Maps there is not much more than desert.

That reference to gardens is not coincidental, as you can imagine. Traditionally, In Islamic culture the garden is a space for meditation: paradise on earth. But outside of the religious seams, the gardens in this part of the world are also spaces of enjoyment, small oases among all the sand.

That is why it is easy to associate Qiddiyah and its reference to gardens with their ultimate purpose. And the city aims to be a theme park megaproject which is part of what is known as Saudi Vision 2030, the project to position the country as more than a petrostate and attract new investments, workers and tourism.

Although satellite images barely show desert in much of this new city, Qiddiyah already has the first Six Flags outside of North America. The well-known chain of theme parks has already risen in the heart of this artificial city the longest, tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world. This theme park alone has cost 1 billion dollars, which, of course, has been funded by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), the kingdom’s sovereign investment fund.

This theme park is the first step for a project that, forecasts say, should attract 17 million tourists from 2030. The potential is enormous and Spanish companies have not wanted to be left behind. For this reason, they have already taken positions: public transportation.

We will have to move all these people

That’s what They will have thought about Alsa company in charge, together with the Saudi Hafil, of launching the public transport service of the megacity of theme parks.

And the Asturian company, through the Alsa-Hafil consortium, will be in charge of putting into motion 156 buses (of which 126 vehicles will be completely electric). The contract has a duration of eight years and is valued at 500 million euros.

To offer the service, Alsa has also partnered with Indra. The latter will be the company in charge of monitoring bus traffic in real time. This will be possible because the buses will have 5G communications service, video surveillance and counting the number of travelers traveling in each vehicle.

They assure in Indra that all this data will allow them to better manage bus traffic, reducing the congestion they may face in a city that aims to have 600,000 people inside, including workers and visitors to theme parks. And they even want to build a Formula 1 circuit to put the cherry on top of the megacity of theme parks.

Getting the contract is another example of the expansion that Spanish companies that are experts in mobility are having outside our borders and, especially, in the Middle East. And there Renfe has also done business with what is known as AVE to Meccaa service that works with Talgo trains.

For its part, Indra already manages other services related to public transportation in Saudi Arabia. And it is the company in charge of maintaining the service of ticketing of the Riyadh Metro. Moventis, integrated within the consortium North West Busalso operates in 60 Saudi cities.

Photo | Qiddiya on Twitter

In Xataka | If building a 170 km long building seemed dystopian, NEOM ups the ante: a huge water park in the desert