Transforming Jeddah’s Transportation Landscape with Hammam Saab

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Welcome to the Mobility Redefined Podcast, where we spotlight transformative

mobility leaders and projects reshaping how cities are moving.

I am Dr. Kaan Yidizgoz, and today I'm very pleased to be joined by my

good friend, Mr. Hammam Saab vice President for Technical Affairs

at Jeddah Transport Company.

Jeddah is Saudi Arabia's second largest city, and the critical gateway

for pilgrims and global travelers.

Cities like Jeddah are undergoing historic transport transformations

from modernizing their bus systems to reimagining tax operations and preparing

to host World Cup in the country.

Hammam is at the technical helm of this evolution, helping Jeddah.

Designing systems that are smarter, more sustainable, and more inclusive.

Welcome Hammam.

Thank you so much Kaan for this, introduction.

I'll do my best, to give the insight of what we're doing here.

you're talking about Jeddah.

we have a very common saying, in Arabic, Jeddah Ghair means Jeddah is different.

Jeddah is energetic city.

Jeddah has a soul.

Jeddah is popular.

Jeddah is loved.

Jeddah is fun.

Jeddah is definitely a unique city in the kingdom.

And, I hope in my line of work we can support, the way of living for

the Jeddawis people, visitors and residents through our projects in

public transportation inshallah.

that's great to have you Hammam with us.

Thanks for joining once again, and let's dive into how Jeddah is navigating this

ambitious mobility, transformation.

And let me.

Transport Strategy of the country.

How does Jeddah Transport Company's work align with this vision and

national mobility priorities?

it's just a clear vision of how our future country will

be, our future cities will be.

And Jeddah being the second largest city in the kingdom, has a lot of potential,

has a lot of aspects that we should be focusing on to help the country.

Move into the, the future, in a very, outstanding way as what we aim for our,

country inshallah Jeddah is like I was saying, the second largest city, it is

the gateway to the two Holy mosques.

it has, it's the commercial capital of Saudi.

It's also, has one of the largest ports in the region, has maybe one of

the busiest airports in the region.

So definitely we need to roll up our sleeves and gear into doing

whatever it takes to meet the ambitious plans for our vision.

2030 for the country.

I think you were mentioning about, one of the largest airports, I think what

I was reading some, some weeks ago, in the newspaper saying that in the busy period

there's a hundred thousand passengers per day using the Jeddahs airport.

It was very interesting figure.

yes, absolutely.

it's, we have millions of people come for certain season to Jeddah

in specific to go to Mecca Medina.

And definitely Jeddah has the airport that's, enough size and

equipped to receive all these people.

It's definitely an important link from Jeddah to the two holy cities

plus other cities in the region.

So definitely Jeddah is a hub.

For whomever comes to the kingdom.

And then what I know is that Jeddah is, you are working in terms of

revamping the bus system of the city.

Can you walk us through the scale of this, transformation and what

residents can expect from the bus transport in the future in Jeddah?

Uh, yes, that's actually, that's my universe.

lasted for about seven years.

It was only six lines.

And, I have to admit that we are learning as we go.

We learned a lot through this period.

And, ham, we just signed the contract for a new bus service last April,

and, we have, Now 14 lines versus what we had before are six lines.

And we have a larger fleet of buses using the latest technology in buses and also

environmental friendly euro five buses.

And, some of the fleet is, electrical buses as well.

So definitely that's, that's our, bread and butter.

That's what we do every day.

We also constructed a few bus.

Stations, air conditioned bus stations, and we expect to increase

the number every year in Shaah.

we just also announced the start of a sea taxi network a couple of months

ago, and, we are working on the first and last mile as part of our network.

This is what we do every day.

we plan, we think we brainstorm different ideas, and we look forward

to having increased fleet as we get along in the future years.

And then you were mentioning about the sea taxis, and maybe you can

also tell us about your plans in terms of the taxi transport in the city and

together with this, sea taxi, option.

the Sea Taxi, we started a small network and we expected to grow in Shaah.

like Jeddah is on the Red Sea.

Of course, the sea is the main feature of, coastal city like Jeddah.

It's definitely an attraction point where many people would definitely,

I can see now, if someone comes to Jeddah Haji or Amra people,

they have their buses go near.

Any marina and they take a tour around the Red Sea.

So this has become an important aspect for us.

It's, it's transportation slash tourism sea taxi.

We expect in the future the fleet will grow, we'll have more stops to

serve Jeddah and the kind of suburbs near Jeddah And we hope also to have

some advanced technology for the operation of the sea taxis in Shaah.

that's perfect.

And then in terms of the regular taxes in the city, what's your plan?

I was hearing.

A lot from your colleagues in terms of, let's say there is now currently

mostly the individuals are owning and operating the taxis, and then how do

you plan to change this taxi landscape?

Because we heard that the Transport General Authority gave some, some advices

to the different cities, and then you are trying to follow these advices as well.

Actually, that's definitely a good question because just recently,

we have been tasked with the responsibility to update, upgrade the

taxi service in the city of Jeddah.

Like you mentioned now is running almost by individuals, many companies,

and it's not controlled that much.

city of Jeddah for the time being.

We expect in the near future to have franchise companies maybe.

Four or five companies that will be running the taxi service in Jada.

We expect the service will be done through applications.

We expect that, we'll have, modern cars, with much better service to

the city in Shaah, and we expect to have certain parking spots.

For the taxis in the major, busy points, malls, points

of interest, stuff like that.

So definitely it's in our plans.

we hope, in about, beginning of next year we can sign the first franchise, to bring

up the, taxi service in Jeddah inshallah

so that's perfect.

It seems that, you know, Jeddah is also becoming an very interesting hub for

the taxi operating companies globally.

So they will have a more interest, to get in touch and then, to put

their fleet on the ground there.

So I'm sure that your doors are being knocked a lot by the

different operators as of today.

Yes, actually, maybe if I can talk about the general aspect.

We hope within the next five, let's say about around five years, we'll

have an integrated, application that can give residents and visitors,

the full trip from wherever they are, into wherever they wanna go.

That application should have, of course, the buses.

Hopefully it'll have also provision for the sea taxi and the normal taxi as well.

Hopefully also, it'll have provision for the first and last mile as it is

known, the environment in this part of the world can be very hot and humid, so

we wanna make sure that the people, we encourage the people to use the public

transportation as much as possible through giving them a complete solution.

So once a person gets out of his house, he can get, a vehicle that will take him

to the nearest bus stop and then he can take the bus and that might take him to

whatever his destination is, and then maybe he can also get into the sea taxi

or the last mile to reach his destination.

So we're definitely looking for an integrated, complete solution to

support public transportation in Jeddah.

And then you were mentioning, you were explaining the last mile.

Are you having any idea in terms of like a bus on demand and this kind

of services DRT type of services?

we're planning to have certain trial of different,

options in the city of Jeddah.

We think in the near future we might try something that looks like vans, like small

vans as we expect that people will, can get this vehicle outside their house.

So, we think a small, vans with maybe up to 12 passengers can do the job.

And this will be feeding the nearest, bus station or whatever network, the.

passengers are planning to get into.

So we expect that the people will leave home and comfort get into the

air conditioned van, get into the air conditioned bus stop and then go

into his destination through the bus or any other means that he will need.

We're still exploring different options, how we will do it, and

like I was telling you before.

What we're doing here, we're learning.

So we try something and we see if it works or not, and then we improve on it and we

move forward, further into that direction.

And, Jeddah is now also, connected with other cities with a high speed rail.

So that's, I guess, that that's giving you a lot of relief in

terms of reach into the city.

And then you may have some ideas to put some rail inside

the city in the future as well.

Can you tell us about this also?

for the time being, we're connecting, our network, our bus

network to the two railway stations.

There is one at the airport, the high speed rail, and there's another one

in an area named the Sulaymaniyah.

And our buses reach both destinations and it connects the whole city of

Jeddah Actually, Not only that, there's a bus network that goes

to other cities in the kingdom.

We're connecting our network to that as well.

And, we expect, maybe, like you mentioned before, Haj and other

seasons, we expect to increase the frequency of our bus fleet, whatever.

There's, there's certain demand for such thing.

and we expect our network to really be, flexible enough to adapt to any,

expected, demand in any direction.

And, when we look at all these preparations, it is certainly, let's say.

A way for increasing your readiness for the Haj, which you are every

year, hosting more than 2 million pilgrims visitors to, your city.

And also you have the World Cup, that's coming very soon to the, to your country.

So how you can be linking all your efforts with both the Haj and World Cup.

there was a, recent survey saying that about, 30%

of Haji will spend few days in.

And like I was saying, Jeddah is a commercial hub, a major

commercial hub in Saudi.

So definitely you can see a lot of haj people here.

Our current network connects to all, methods to enter into the city of Jeddah.

So we do have, linkage, like I was saying with the two high speed, rail stations,

plus all the other buses that brings hajis from Mecca or Medinah and other locations.

And, we have flexibility in our network to.

To entertain whatever demand we have.

so more or less we expect that all the points of interest for hagis

are covered within our network.

We expect in the future that aspect will grow even further.

And in shaah, just maintaining certain flexibility.

And we grow as as needed in any direction we need to.

And then World Cup for the World Cup, Hammam, I guess you will be

hosting the games as well in Jeddah.

Am I right on this?

Yes, that's true, there's gonna be four stadiums in the city

We are already planning our next bus, network to really have a heavy presence,

to provide passenger flow to all the four stadiums and also for the World Cup final.

They have.

Points of interest for fans, for whatever events they will have.

plus the hotels that will be, hosting all the visitors.

So we expect our future network It'll have strong presence to

In Shaah?

I have, uh, Al-Hilal from Jeddah.

Am I, am I right you football

no, no.

Off your way off.

Al-Ittihad and Al-Ahli: from Jeddah By the way, Al-Ahli: just won the Asian Cup.

Al-Ahli: just won the Asian Cup, a couple of, maybe 10 days ago.

So you see very happy now.

and  Al-Ittihad just won the local Saudi league just, last week.

So Jeddah, as as far as football is concerned, Jeddah

is very happy place these days.

Al-Ahli won for Asia, Al-Ittihad for Saudi.

So these are good days for, football fans for Jeddah.

that's great.

And then with all this transformation, we are sure that maybe in 10 years

time you will be winning the global prize for public transport as well

in terms of the transformation.

absolutely.

We hope so.

that's perfect.

And then maybe you were also mentioning about, like, like a sustainability,

some smart mobility, euro five.

Are there any plans in terms of the electric bus fleets or some

decarbonization in this front?

What are your, what are your plans also?

for this specific topic, I have a very interesting story.

It started with thumbs up on LinkedIn.

for me, living in Jeddah, living in Saudi, I can see that there's a big city, a lot

of pollution cars, buses caused that.

So I saw on LinkedIn there's a company named Yutong.

They're operating electric buses in cutters.

So I said some good words and I had some up thumbs up for whatever,

they were showing on LinkedIn.

Then that was, the start of an excellent relationship with

Yutong which led to a trial of electric bus in the city of Jeddah.

We champion this trial for almost a year.

we hear consultant, we ask consultant electric buses, they say, no,

your environment is too hot.

Maybe the, the battery will not be able to stand, air conditioning all the time.

So, Our experience with Yutong with this actual trial gave us actual data.

We with our operator and, had this trial and we were monitoring on daily basis,

how efficient was air conditioning, how efficient was the battery?

Were there any problems, with that operation?

And I say Alhamdulillah, because at the end of the day, the

trial was complete success.

We have actual data that we gained.

We did ourselves, not through consultants, not through anybody else.

That data led into.

Our current fleet that has few electric buses in the fleet as a permanent, buses

operating in our, city plus It also supported other cities in the kingdom.

Like, I don't know if you hear like in Tabuk, I think in, maybe

Dammam and probably Medina too.

Now.

It became a trend that all major cities in the kingdom will

aim to have, electric buses.

So definitely sustainability is important aspect for us.

The electric, or, the clean fuel vehicles will be increasing gradually.

and, we expect every new bus package, it'll have more, better fuel.

now we have Euro five.

Maybe in the future it'll be euro, six or something.

Also, we'll have maybe more buses as electric So definitely this is

something that we're interested in.

To add to that, even for our, taxis.

For the franchise, we're expecting to have a certain percentage of the,

taxis to be completely electrical, a certain percentage to be hybrid.

and again, even for the taxis, we expect that percentage to grow.

same goes for the sea taxi.

We are now exploring different technologies here and there for,

sea taxi operators that would have.

Electric for electric vehicles for the sea taxi.

So definitely this is one thing that my company is, focusing on, and we

hope in few years more will have more, electric, vehicles in every aspect.

And that will only become more and more as we go through the, in Shama.

You have a big challenge because A country is known as a car, society.

people love using their cars.

also that you are an oil producer, that the fuel is cheaper

than many parts of the world.

So how culturally you can convince people to leave their

cars and use public transport.

So it's a big dilemma that you are facing.

Certainly that increasing the supply is one, one very important thing.

But how are your thoughts about this?

it's really interesting because like, like I was saying before, we

had, six lines of bus service in the city that lasted for about seven years.

I think we have learned a lot, now technology now in our new

bus fleet, the current one, we have an easy to use application.

We see many more young people using it because the application is clear.

It tells you clear information.

you can pay.

The bus with any means you can use your ATM card, you can use, visa,

you can use the application itself.

and I think, like I was saying before, in the future, we're

hopping for a complete solution.

we wanna give everybody, the option of having a comfortable,

from a to B complete journey for anybody, who, who wants to use it.

I think if we provide, a good service, if we provide comfortable

service, people will use it.

We already can see now with our latest, contract.

There's a shift.

There's so many more Saudis using it.

we can see Saudi families are using it.

We can see a lot of young guys.

A lot of students are using it.

Why?

Because the service is better.

The buses are better.

The technology is better.

it's much more comfortable.

you can understand where exactly you can go and how you can do

that with a simple application.

So I think it's our job to insist of having high quality

service every step of the way.

And I am sure, little by little, the people here will get more used to it.

once they see it's a good service, they will definitely use it.

Keep in mind, historically.

Jeddah Seems to be the most likely place for public transportation

to succeed because like I was saying, Jeddah is a casual place.

Jeddah is a relaxed place.

People here by far would not mind using public transportation.

So inshallah, if we give them excellent service, believe me,

the shift is happening already.

there is also one, I have one last question is that there

are a lot of mega projects in your country, and if I'm not wrong, one

of them is not very far from you.

It's the Red Sea, project.

So is it's close by to Jeddah.

Am I wrong?

not very far.

No, I think, I dunno.

What project are we talking about?

There are projects inside the city of Jeddah, like Jeddah Central Development.

Al-Balad.

Al-Balad is a very powerful destination, is the historical heart of Jeddah.

It's a very well established destination for tourism, residents.

We expect a kind of, Suburbs of Jeddah.

There are other projects that will be linked to Jeddah.

Definitely in our future network, we expect that we will have, I don't

know, maybe something like, different kind of buses to take you from because

these places sometimes like 50, 60 kilometers away, we expect our network

will grow to cover that through appropriate, buses in the future.

But I think our area of concentration for the near future is what we have within

the city of Jeddah, high concentrated area with population, where we feel it's, it's

where the demand is higher, but in the future, we expect the network will grow.

And, it'll cover also suburbs, of Jeddah with less density, but it should also

be with high quality service to make sure any, visitor or resident can use

the service in the most comfortable way.

Thank you Mr. Hammam, for sharing your insights and the

inspiring work happening in Jeddah.

Are there any final message you would like to share with our listeners about

what's next for Jeddah Transport Company?

I just wanna say we try to do things differently.

We try to do things with more creativity.

We try to make it more lively.

I encourage everybody, visit Jeddah.

Jeddah is unique, Jeddah is fun.

Whatever you want.

Business shopping work.

Red Sea Haj, Umrah Jeddah is it.

Please visit us.

Thank you.

It has been a big pleasure having you on the Mobility Redefined Podcast.

to our listeners, thank you for tuning in.

We will be back soon with more voices from around the world

driving the future of mobility.

Thank you so much and I appreciate it.

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