Arab Spring casts shadow on Saudi road transport

Recent political developments in neighboring countries are affecting passengers and goods transported by roads from Saudi Arabia to Yemen, Egypt and Syria, said a road transport expert in Jeddah on Tuesday. The expert also said that the road transport sector in the Kingdom lost approximately SR 2 billion, while the market volume of travel between the Kingdom and neighboring countries were estimated at SR 5 billion. Prior to the beginning of the Arab Spring in Yemen and Syria, expatriates used to travel by road in large numbers to their respective countries and to Jordan, but their numbers have dwindled to an extremely low level, he said. Deputy Chairman Saeed Al-Bassami of the Transport Committee at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) said the transport of passengers between the Kingdom and other countries have been seriously affected by the worsening security situation in countries such as Syria. However, Al-Bassami ruled out the possibility of the Kingdom’s truck transport being affected by the various new train projects that are currently being implemented in the Kingdom. He put the number of trucks in the Kingdom at 60,000 and hoped that the railway will complement the road transport, especially when the Kingdom is striving to reach the ranks of advanced countries that have a vast railway system, which is also needed to cater to the needs of a growing population. He added that the Saudi transport sector, including air, sea and land transport, is worth SR 67 billion annually. He said the railway would not affect the regular road transport in the Kingdom. A member of the transport committee at the JCCI, Tariq Suleiman, said the railway would not make any immediate impact on the road transport, adding that any impact may show up sometime in the future. Suleiman said in a statement to a local newspaper that “the truck transport possessed some attractive features, such as not being restricted by any timing schedule, as is the case with trains.” He also said that past experience had showed us that transporting goods via train services had no negative impact on the vast trucking services in Europe over the past many decades, adding that it is too soon to say whether the train service would have any negative impact on the truck service.  From: arabnews