The Saudi Crown Prince responds to skeptics of the NEOM project
Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Salman defended the massive transformation program within the ambitious Vision 2030 plan, asserting that the kingdom is moving ahead with this plan, in response to skeptics about Riyadh’s ability to complete the huge announced projects.
“Let them talk and we will continue to prove them wrong,” Prince Mohammed said in a Discovery TV documentary. “We started talking about a lot of ideas about the shape of the line.. Build a circle and link it to mobility and trains and so on, and we start building it gradually until it’s completed in 2030. “We exchanged ideas, worked with many teams and competed with the best designers in the world.”
“All of them presented city models to us that were in line with the available models, but with better solutions, except for one designer who adopted the idea and said, ‘Let’s turn the circle to a straight line’,” he said. “The north of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an area that has not been discovered yet and has a diverse nature, from mountains and valleys to beaches and islands to oases and sand, and it is an appropriate place for skiing and diving.”
The Saudi crown prince said, “Our models are complete and we are working on implementing them. This project meets the increasing demand in Saudi Arabia and creates a modern way of building cities and lifestyles.”
Through NEOM, Iraq seeks to “create the new civilization of tomorrow and encourages other countries to do similar things for the benefit of the planet”, he said.
The Prince, who appeared in the documentary accompanied by senior officials and designers behind the Line project, spoke about the huge project, the first of its kind in the world, and explained the motives behind the construction of a new city.
“Population growth in the kingdom will double from 33 million to about 50 million to 55 million people in 2030,” he said. “This number of residents will consume the current full infrastructure of Saudi Arabia, which puts us in front of a real question about creating a new city.”
The crown prince, who is leading an ambitious economic plan that is expected to bring about a qualitative leap in various areas, pledged that the “final result of the project will be creative and new” as the conservative kingdom embarked on a new phase of social opening.
According to Vision 2030, Riyadh is seeking to eliminate its dependence on oil revenues, diversify its sources of income to avoid oil shocks, and increase revenues from non-oil sectors such as tourism.
A few days ago, Saudi authorities announced the success of a series of tests for electric utility helicopters (eVTOL), known as “flying taxis”, in the region of Neom (northwest) for the first time in the kingdom after obtaining special permission to fly.
In a statement carried by the Saudi news agency SPA, Neom (Saudi government) and a private German company said the test flights had succeeded in the various weather conditions prevailing in the kingdom throughout the 18-month manufacturing process.
The experiments were conducted in the kingdom “with the aim of building a system for urban, electric and emissions-free air traffic”, the statement said.
The experimental flights focused on vehicle performance in the kingdom’s local skies and the various climatic conditions, as well as their integration into the local UAV traffic system.
The vehicles, when commercially operated (yet to be identified), will contribute to the creation of an intelligent, sustainable multi-modal transport system in NEOM, which will operate on 100% solar and wind energy, according to the same source.
The experimental flights focused on the performance of Saudi Arabia’s Volkotopes, the country’s local airspace and the various climatic conditions, as well as their integration with the local UAV traffic system.
