Saudi Arabia starts building a city of the future without cars and roads

Saudi Arabia has begun construction on The Line, a new city in a straight line 170 km long from the Red Sea coast to the provincial capital Tabuk. There will be no roads or cars in the metropolis, all transport will be underground and high-speed. The city of the future will start receiving residents and tourists in 2024

Saudi Arabia has begun construction on a new linear city, The Line, which will stretch 170 km from the Red Sea coast to the provincial capital Tabuk. The futuristic metropolis will begin accepting its first residents and tourists as early as 2024, Nadmi al-Nasr, head of the Neom project, of which the construction of The Line is part, said in an interview with Bloomberg.

Now the project is at an early stage and “even 1%” of all the work necessary for planning and building the city has not been completed, the source said. According to Nadmi al-Nasr, the construction work that has begun is mainly "moving sand and mountains" to lay underground transport infrastructure. It is planned that the 170-kilometer metropolis will be built not from one point, but from both ends at once, the head of Neom added. According to him, more than 1,500 builders are already working and living at the facility.

One of the next steps could be the approval of rules that would regulate Neom as a "free zone" with laws different from the rest of Saudi Arabia, Nadmi al-Nasr said. According to his forecast, this may happen in the first quarter of next year.

The construction of The Line is part of an even more ambitious Neom project that Muhammad ibn Salman announced back in 2017. According to Bloomberg, the Saudi prince intends to turn the region on the northwest coast of the Red Sea into a technology hub that will embody his vision of phasing out the oil economy in favor of high technology, easing social restrictions and increasing foreign investment.