MAKKAH: About 70 percent of work on the fifth and last phase of the expansion of the Jamrat area and the bridge in Mina has been completed. The bridge will now be able to accommodate about four million pilgrims.
The first phase of the project was completed about four years ago on an area of 170,000 meters and involved the building of a basement, a ground floor, a first floor, and entrances and exits.
More than 600 engineers and 11,000 laborers and technicians worked on the first of the five phases, which included around 53 percent of the entire expansion.
The first phase increased the number of users by 25 percent and gave the Jamrat an oval look instead of a circular one. A total 5,000 laborers worked in shifts around the clock on the fifth and final phase to expand the bridge, which has been designed in a way that prevents the gathering of a large number of pilgrims at any one entrance simultaneously. Entrances and exits have been made on the bridge at different levels to accommodate both incoming and outgoing pedestrian traffic.
The bridge has been connected to nearby mountains, and both elevators and staircases have been established to ease arrival of traffic to the Jamrat area.
Pedestrian traffic has been separated from vehicle traffic, and four stairwells that include both staircases and elevators have been built — two to the north of King Fahd Road and two at the eastern part of the Jamrat. The expansion has also seen the building of 11 entrances and 12 exits in four directions in addition to a helipad for emergencies. An advanced cooling system has been built in the Jamrat area that will pump water particles into the air to reduce the temperature to about 29 degrees centigrade. Underground tunnels have also been created for service cars.
