Prince Mansour Bin Mite'b, Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs, is scheduled to witness Tuesday the first trial run of the Holy Sites Train. The driverless, electronically-controlled train will undergo testing in the presence of the ministry's Undersecretary and Holy Sites Development Projects Supervisor, Habeeb Al-Abideen, and senior officials from the Chinese company executing project. The train project is expected to be 35 percent operational by this year's Haj, a period during which the train will only be available for use by internal pilgrims – Saudis and non-Saudi residents of the Kingdom – and those arriving by land who usually have arrive with some 30,000 vehicles of their own. Sources have added that 85 percent of the project is complete, with remaining work concerning the completion of the train's nine stations. Station designs include extensive facilities for the elderly and disabled and allow for up to 500,000 passengers to pass through them in six hours, a figure expected to be reached on Arafat Day and during the Nafra mass movement of pilgrims from Arafat to Muzdalifa and Mina on the night of the tenth of Dhu Al-Hijja. It is hoped that the train will render obsolete the 35,000 buses transport pilgrims during the two mass transfers of Nafra and Tas'eed which have led in the past to considerable traffic congestion. Over 15,000 workers - 14,000 of them Chinese – continue to work around the clock to ensure the project meets its first deadline by Haj 2010, while the Chinese company contracted to the project will continue to oversee maintenance work for the next three years until Saudi staff are fully trained. Al-Abideen has moved to address concerns, meanwhile, over the cost of train tickets, saying that he intends to put the issue to Prince Naif, Second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, and Chairman of the Supreme Haj Committee. He assured, however, that the cost would reflect the price of the buses that have so far been used to transport pilgrims between the Holy Sites.
