The combined experience of 77 years of three top field traffic officers has helped streamline the movement of nearly 2.5 million pilgrims in a limited area of about two million square meters this year. The three officers charged with traffic management in the holy sites in and around Makkah have spoken about their past Haj experiences which they perceive as positive as they become increasingly able to overcome the challenge of regulating Haj traffic. For the past 27 years, Col. Abdul Rahman Al-Miqbil, chief of the Riyadh Traffic Department, has traded his comfortable office in Riyadh for a 20 sq. m. tent on King Adul Aziz Bridge in Mina a month before the start of the Haj. And from his small tent, the master plan for Haj traffic is evolved. The six days of Haj are very long, he said, describing the load of work he and his colleagues have to accomplish around the clock. “We can only breathe a sigh of relief when the last pilgrim leaves Makkah,” he said. “I have worked in Mina during the Haj since 1982,” he said. “In 1992, I was put in charge of the Mina Traffic Department during the Haj season,” he added. “It is an easy, yet in some ways a tough job to do as compared to the traffic in Riyadh, which is laid out over an area of 12 million square meters,” he said. That gives us a lot more flexibility in managing traffic, he said. “But in Mina, we have to consider the religious obligations of pilgrims to perform Haj rituals, which complicates the traffic plan,” he said. The traffic personnel, however, find great comfort and pride in serving the pilgrims despite all those problems, he said. Managing the traffic in Muzadlifa where pilgrims spend a night before moving to Mina is much more complicated than managing the traffic in a big extended city of three million people like Jeddah, said Col. Muhammad Al-Qahtani, chief of the Jeddah Traffic Department, who is also charged with the Muzdalifa Traffic Department during the Haj season. “It is like a crash course for us here in managing the traffic of over 70,000 vehicles in a limited area within a limited period of time. It is like sand running through an hourglass,” he said. “Haj traffic was much different 20 years ago. Now as the number of pilgrims and projects increase in this limited area, so do the responsibilities of the traffic personnel,” he said. “The City of Tents (Mina) poses a big traffic challenge to all of us here,” he said. But the traffic personnel are up to the challenge, he added. “It is like a traffic academy for traffic personnel to study and learn during the six-day Haj,” he said. Inside the traffic operations room in Mina, sits Col. Khaled Al-Muhammadi, chief of the Emergency Forces Operations, monitoring 250 surveillance cameras pointed to the Jamarat area and tent camps. “I have worked for 25 years during the Haj and have participated in international conferences with papers on crowd management in the Haj,” he said. The management of mass movements of people has enriched the security experience of the traffic personnel, he said. The Emergency Forces are perceived to be a very strict task force when it comes to homeland security, but during the Haj, the force extends its helping hand to serve the pilgrims, he said.
