Road Transportation
total: 152,044 km
paved: 450000,461 km
unpaved: 100,000 km (2000)
Roads in Saudi Arabia vary from eight laned roads to small two laned roads in rural areas. The city highways and other major highways are well maintained, specially the roads in the capital Riyadh. The roads have been constructed to resist the consistently high temperatures and do not reflect the strong sunshine. The outer city highways such as the one linking from coast to coast are not as great as the inner-city highways but the government is now working on rebuilding those roads.
Saudi Arabia encourages road transport as it has maintained one of the lowest petrol prices in the world, at $0.48 per gallon ($0.13 per liter).
Some of the important inter-city highways include the following:
- Dammam - Abu Hadriya - Ras Tanura Highway (257 km)
- Khaybar - Al Ola Highway (175 km)
- Makkah - Madinah Al Munawarah Highway (421 km)
- Riyadh - Dammam Highway (383 km)
- Riyadh - Sedir - Al Qasim Highway (317 km)
- Riyadh - Taif Highway (750 km)
- Taif - Abha - Gizan Highway (750 km)
- Medina - Tabuk Highway (680 km)
- Jeddah - Al Leith - Jizan Highway (775 km)
- Jeddah - Makkah Highway (80 km)
Read more about this topic: Transport In Saudi Arabia
Famous quotes containing the word road:
“Evil can be got very easily and exists in quantity: the road to her is very smooth, and she lives near by. But between us and virtue the gods have placed the sweat of our brows; the road to her is long and steep, and it is rough at first; but when a man has reached the top, then she is easy to attain, although before she was hard.”
—Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)