Al Mashaaer Al Muqaddasah Metro Project MMMP

The Al Mashaaer Al Mugaddassah Metro Line (MMMP), which is part of the Makkah (Mecca) Metro, is an 18.1km line constructed to connect the holy cities of Mecca, Arafat, Muzdalifa and Mina. The line was opened in November 2010 and became fully operational in November 2011.

The Mecca monorail project has been one of many undertaken by Saudi Arabia to expand its railway network to meet the transportation needs of its growing population of 25 million and improve an antiquated logistics infrastructure.

The line provides transport for about 3.5 million people who arrive at Mecca annually to perform Hajj. The number is expected to increase to five million in future.

Details of the Al Mashaaer Al Mugaddassah Metro Line project

"The Makkah monorail project has been one of many undertaken by Saudi Arabia to expand its railway network."

Construction of the monorail project has helped to solve the problem of heavy traffic congestion in the holy cities during the Hajj period and meet the transportation needs of the local people . Masterplans drawn up by MonoMetro show that five monorails need to be constructed to handle the flow of pilgrims to the holy cities.

Based on the need to transport pilgrims from Mina to Arafat a four-line parallel loop network was developed. The line can transport about 500,000 pilgrims in six to eight hours. It has also allowed authorities to reduce the number of buses needed to transport pilgrims from 70,000 to 25,000.

The first phase of the project included the four-line loop with a network of pick-up and drop-off stations between Mina and Arafat. The first of the five new metro lines started operating with Automatic Train Protection at 35% capacity by November 2010.

The metro could carry 72,000 passengers in each direction per hour by 2011’s Hajj. About 8,000 skilled and unskilled workers, along with 5,000 engineers, were engaged in the project.