Chairman of the Jeddah Municipal Council Tariq Fadaq has slammed the state of pedestrian bridges both in Jeddah and across the Kingdom following Monday's fire on a walkway over the Haramain Highway that crippled traffic for five hours and posed a danger to the public. “Over 80 percent of the bridges in Jeddah are poorly maintained and could pose a severe danger at any minute,” said Fadaq, who has for the last three months been carrying out a study on the state of pedestrian bridges. Council member Abdul Rahman Yamani also voiced his concerns, saying that the condition of the bridges was prompting the public to forego using them and thus exposing people to further dangers. “Many pedestrians prefer taking the risk of crossing between the traffic on main roads,” Yamani said. “There seems to have been no maintenance work carried out on the bridges since their construction, and they fail to meet the needs of the increasing number of pedestrians.” Yamani said the Jeddah mayoralty should learn from international experience in the field, notably Europe, where pedestrian bridges and tunnel walkways are provided at main roads in densely-populated areas. Vice Chairman of the Municipal Council Hassan Al-Zahrani said the pedestrian bridge situation in Jeddah required a detailed study in light of the increasing number of pedestrians and incidents occurring at bridges. The Haramain bridge which caught fire Monday was of wooden construction, and officials at the municipality are treating the incident as arson, citing a similar incident at the same bridge four months ago. Ahmed Al-Ghamdi of the municipality's media relations center said there were 20 pedestrian bridges in central Jeddah, 11 of which were rented out to investors for nearly SR1.5 million annually, with those same investors responsible for their maintenance and repair. The bridge involved in Monday's incident, however, was the responsibility of the municipality, according to Al
