JEDDAH, 17 September 2004 — Work on the new Jamrat bridge expansion project designed to serve four million pilgrims will start in February, according to Dr. Habib Mustafa Zain Al-Abidine, deputy minister of municipal and rural affairs.
“The ministry has completed studies on the project’s architectural designs and it will be implemented in four phases within five years,” Al-Riyadh Arabic daily quoted Zain Al-Abidine as saying.
The project in the holy site of Mina aims at facilitating the stoning ritual during Haj and easing the movement of pilgrims in the tent city. It will increase the capacity of the Jamrat site to 500,000 pilgrims per hour.
The deputy minister said he was unable to give an estimate of the project’s total cost as it will depend on the offers of companies vying to win the contract. “We have already called for tenders to implement the project,” he added.
As per the plan, the new Jamrat bridge will have four floors and the pillars holding the bridge will be established on its edge to allow free and uninterrupted movement of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims.
The ground floor will have three tunnels — Souk Al-Arab tunnel, Jowhara tunnel and King Faisal tunnel. “Every floor will have its own entrances and exits without clashing with those of other floors,” the deputy minister said.
The first expansion of the Jamrat was carried out in 1975 when the current bridge was constructed. It accommodates about 80,000 pilgrims per hour. In a very crowded situation, it could accommodate about 100,000 per hour per floor.
The new plan was prepared after three years of study. Field research was conducted with the help of experts from Saudi Arabia and outside and consulting Muslim scholars. The aim is to develop the whole area, not just the bridge.
There will be two entrances to the Jamrat from the side of Makkah. People coming from Aziziya will go straight to the second floor of the Jamrat overpass. People coming from north Mina will be routed to the third floor and those from south Mina will be directed to the fourth floor.
Dr. Muhammad Abdullah Edrees, head of the King Fahd Haj Institute’s team for designing the project, said the team had studied the shape of the Jamrat and found that an elliptical shape was the best suited for the purpose.
“Whenever you expand it, you get more foot traffic. So we decided to change the shape to elliptical with a wall, about 36 meters long. Also, we did about 10 entrances and 12 exits. So people will never face a difficult flow of traffic,” he said.
There will be electronic gates to control the crowds. The design of the gates is such that when closed they will go in semi-circle, piece by piece not affecting the pilgrims. The gates have signs showing which is the first floor, second and so on. The ground floor will be an open area with no gates.
The bridge is a notorious bottleneck and has been the scene of several stampedes that over the years killed and injured hundreds of people.
