Impressions & Thoughts: Traffic, Gas Stations, Expo2030 and Formula 1 in Saudi

Booking a rental car to explore Saudi Arabia on our own road trip was exactly the right decision. As a safe driver, at least I would qualify myself as such, I never experienced fear or great uncertainty on the Saudi roads. Through our travel experiences, I am also well aware of the moments when you simply have to play it cool in order to hold your own between the avalanches of cars. This was already true in Tunisia, Jordan, in China on the e-motor scooter and also on the bike on India's roads.

What we noticed quickly, already during our first cab night ride through Jeddah: there are hardly any traffic lights. There were then, but most of the roads through the huge cities are actually highways. We'll get to the speed limits later. And for turning possibilities on these city highways, there are turning bends on the left side, which regularly take you in the opposite direction. Funnily enough, as a pedestrian, this is not so easy sometimes. Saudi Arabia reminded me a bit of the U.S., walking is rather uncommon, relevant places are also far too far apart, which is mainly due to the immense size of the cities. In addition, there is the temperature, because Saudi Arabia is a desert country, in March walking was very pleasant, but who wants to use sidewalks at 50 degrees in the summer. The air-conditioned glass tunnel system in Asian subtropical metropolises, such as Singapore, immediately comes to mind.

On the subject of traffic, it must also be said that a public transportation system, especially from a tourist point of view, is virtually non-existent. We had the impression that only poorer working classes used ride-sharing services. Shared cabs are also a popular means here. But Uber and Bolt was very comfortable and common to use, but you need to consider the waiting time as well. Often it looks near by, but using all the turning points takes time for the drivers.

The construction sites in Riyadh were impressive. A complete metro network will be taken live by the end of this year, we are still talking about 2023. That's really impressive, and as we learned on The Radio Vagabond podcast, the project, which started in 2013, is costing a whopping 22.5billion Euros. But the stations will probably be works of art of the urban underworld, the posters at the construction sites already let us guess. The metro would have saved us some waiting time for Uber in Riyadh and will provide tourists with a great service in the future. Just because, as in Berlin, many things are so far apart, we were extremely lacking in public infrastructure. Berlin, we miss you...at least at this point :) In between we still thought of the European double-decker buses, but this attempt also seemed to have failed, at least at our time there were no offers with which you could have explored the city in a relaxed way, without having to concentrate on the traffic or afford your own guide.

And the whole thing has a goal: 2030, can be seen throughout the country on posters, logos on clothing and much more, Saudi Arabia is one of four candidates to host the Expo 2030, next to Italy, Korea and Ukraine. An event with global reach and for perfect representation, the country is visibly turned once left. Really impressive, but in some places also a bit scary. The cultural and religious perspectives and their changes are also worth a chapter of their own. An exciting intellectual debate, which has not yet led to a final result in our case and would not fit into this section, which we might do again, since you also have to formulate your views carefully. You don't mean anything bad, but it should be formulated unambiguously in the right context.

We have also learned this in various podcasts about the Middle East: investment in sports and major events has many benefits and enhances the regions. Qatar has just raised its profile as a non-football country by hosting a World Cup, And is looking to gain collateral as a result. But also the economic success plays naturally a large role, and since cash is anyway plentifully there and also the need to diversify the oil business, such events offer themselves super.

In Saudi Arabia beside future and partly already existing soccer events: the formula 1. With our walk at the Jeddah Corniche (promenade) impressed us the large building site for the race, which should take place 2 weeks later, the 19.03.2023, the Grand Prix of Saudi Arabia in Jeddah. Directly with sea view was already the track, the lighting was tested and around it was buy construction area, again impressive, wow. It didn't look really finished, but they still had 2 weeks and we will follow the stream with excitement, when Hamilton & Co will race past the places we just photographed.

So back to the traffic: A nice to look at, at night in any case dangerous affair are the camels on the right and left far away from the highways and landroads, leisurely looking for their way through the desert. And there is desert like sand on earth on our road trip. It was especially impressive on the way between Ha'il and Riyadh. There suddenly yellow giant dunes grew into the sky and up to the horizon nothing was to be seen, except sand, and of course our highway, where there was then unfortunately still another larger accident with a turned over truck and a car driven into it. Has cost us fortunately only one hour and again many experiences. After all warning lights were lit and the speed was reduced, the chaos started right and left, everyone wanted to be in the first row, on both sides the hard shoulders were driven on, the 4WD's, but also all other vehicles even conquered the sandy areas next to the road until nothing worked anymore, the 3-lane highway became a 10-lane one within a few moments :) It remained all disciplined, after they had taken their observation positions and did not start to drive the accident parallel to the road. Police and rescue services did not actually find access from behind, the helicopter approached so low from the front that we understood it late that from the air help already arrived. When the injured were transported away, however, there was no stopping, the mass of metal rolled past the scene of the accident while a policeman waited alone in front of the crashed cars for the cleanup service. To us it was fine to speed up to get to Riyadh in thenext 60 minutes and compared to the completely crosswise over the roadway laying truck it was a quick scenery.

After this adventure briefly to the traffic rules, before we still urgently need to talk about traffic controls!!!

On the question in the rental car office about maximum speeds, I got the answer, sometimes so sometimes so :) Ok, that helped quite little. But we quickly learned Arabic numbers and often there were also for us readable number formats for info, which by the way applies overall, one has yet amazingly often English support in all the Arabic character worlds. So, in the city never drive faster than 50km/h, on country roads whole 120km/h and on the highways a maximum speed of 150km/h applies. However, similar to us in Europe, these are changed locally at construction sites, dangerous places and entrances/exits. Where it became tricky again directly, because there were few resolution signs or new info and so the Arabs gave gas again, but we never knew which speed is now the appropriate, or better said, the most favorable :) They could still work on that or we have to learn a new traffic rule. THOUGH: You don't want to be flashed in any case, and we were once, exactly in such an unclear situation, but it was only 10km/h too much, which according to our colleague Mahmoud should cost about 50USD, but is certainly not claimed for tourists as he says, we are curious.

It is really unbelievable how many of these camera boxes are distributed on the streets of Saudi Arabia. And according to information from the net, the accident rate and number of traffic fatalities is relatively high, so there is a reason. But the number of speed cameras is really remarkable and our speed control was regularly adjusted to the new limits to save our travel funds, which sometimes led to impatient driving behind us :)

An interesting article with the different camera systems on Saudi Arabia's roads: click here to the article.

Another jerky affair is the speed bumps, which are usually announced by signs. Sometimes, however, they are difficult or even impossible to recognize, for example if the markings have already been driven off and the bumps are in the same color on the road. Safety checks on the highway are also announced and regulated by such speed bumps. Do not orientate yourself too much to the 4WD drivers, who sometimes fly over the small hills without braking.

Which brings us to the driving skills of the Saudis, which is not meant to be a blanket statement for all. But it was striking that Saudis like to drive in the middle of the lane, we didn't quite understand if they keep options open to change direction again on the mostly 3-4 lanes or to use undamaged lane areas :) Anyway, as a European (German?!) you stand out if you stick to the lane painting. And one more thing, anyway, but especially on the roads in Saudi Arabia: keep your fingers away from mobile phones if your are the driver. There are camera systems all over the roads recognizing drivers using a smartphone (and if seat belt is fastened) and that's gonna be very expensive, Mahmoud told us. Back to the impatient ones:

If someone wants to pass, he (or fortunately in Saudi since some time also she) drives up basically close - and we mean really close. If a box of beer would have fit in between, that was already a huge distance. And even better: the hard shoulder cannot be called hard shoulder here either, because it is regularly used by impatient Saudis for overtaking, on the right and also on the left.

There was another unwritten rule that we quickly learned: when cars are coming from behind, especially on single-lane country roads, simply drive so far across the hard shoulder that the left pair of wheels just doesn't roll on the sideline (which makes vibrating warning noises), thus there is so much space on the lane that the impatient ones can definitely rush past :) We have very often read that in case of accidents is actually basically given right to the local, we fortunately did not have to test this out and yet really came very well through the traffic.

Finally, about refueling: It is damn cheap. 50Ct the liter, that was always just under 20-25Euro for the half to three-quarters tank, there the Roadtrip did not hit so strongly in the world trip cash, if you get the rental car on time at a good price.

At gas stations is not to take the job away from the gas station attendant and not to expose yourself unnecessarily to the heat, which you can really get used to. Arabs must be shocked that they have to refuel themselves in Germany. We were able to observe the payment process shortly before the first refueling and were then perfectly prepared. You drive up, gesture once whether you want 91 or 95 and whether you want to fill up, then he will fill up and you pay with the window closed. Simply open Visa on Apple Watch, the gas station attendant holds the card reader to the window and off you go back on the wild road. It was really a fun and very leisurely experience.

So much of the roads of Saudi Arabia with some interesting information around it. We will try to share some more personal impressions and learnings with you, we have really experienced a lot and our next trip would probably already look significantly different, but that's exactly the exciting thing about traveling :)