King Saud University (KSU) plans to build a train network on campus to ease transport difficulties for its staff and 40,000 students. The campus network will be linked to the upcoming Riyadh Metro.
The KSU’s Agency for Projects and a French consulting company, Eages Reel, are currently studying the transport plan for the 2,224-acre university campus. The plan for the railway system was unveiled on the sidelines of a workshop organized by KSU here on Thursday.
In a press statement, KSU said the project would be presented in the next university budget in conjunction with the implementation of the broader Riyadh Metro plan. The metro will likely raise the number of visitors to the university from 46,000 a day to up to 136,000.
A survey of transportation patterns within KSU found most people spent about 85 percent of their time walking, particularly between stops and faculties. It was also found that those who travel in private vehicles represent 13 percent of the total number of visitors. Currently only 2 percent of people use buses, which reflects the low quality of the bus service. The university has a substantial number of foreign students.
A university official said the train system would make it easier for about 5,000 administrative staff and many faculty members living on the campus to travel from one department to another. “The details of the project, such as the structure of the monorail, the number of compartments in each automated train and the passenger capacity will be worked out later,” he added.
The KSU is currently assessing how the routes would operate but one suggestion is an extended section would lead to the subway station on King Abdullah Road in Riyadh. The proposal is to have two main lines branching out of the main route to form two circles, with one on the east side serving those in the dormitories, the sports area and the entertainment area, and another circle on the west side serving those at the stops, central service areas and stations on the university campus.
The two lines will jointly serve the Riyadh Valley for Technology, a 1.7 million-square-meter science and technology park on the KSU campus. The Riyadh Techno Valley hosts a group of local and international research and development institutions.
Only Princess Noura bint Abdulrahman University (PNU) in Riyadh, the largest women’s university in the world, has a modern automated train system with a track length of 11.5 km. Each train has the capacity to accommodate 110 passengers.
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