Saudi Arabia’s wildly ambitious plan to build 500m tall, mirrored, 170km long parallel skyscrapers, forming a 1.5M population desert city has been curtailed to 2.4km long.
The news was broken by the financial news publication Bloomberg, which said that Saudi Arabia’s government had “scaled back its medium-term ambitions” for Neom, of which The Line is the most significant sub-project.
The Saudi government had hoped to have 1.5M residents living in The Line by 2030, but this has been scaled back to fewer than 300,000, according to the report. It is unclear how it intends to house a higher concentration of people considering the proposed length (and therefore area) has been massively slashed.
Ask anyone who’s ever built a house and they can tell you what a stupid fucking idea it would be to have a foundation that large.
Even if they somehow had some magical way to solve the foundation issue, with the original plan… could you imagine having to go from one part of the city to another for pretty much any reason? In a linear city? You better hope that other part is really close. Especially if it’s a personal medical issue or a dying loved one.
This is a good place to have elon’s little super tube!!
Also: this city has only one road. How is traffic going to be? Better hope you somehow get a flat near your work, and that everyone else does too, and that nobody ever moves or cha’mnges job for any reason. This is such a horsehit project I’m surprised the guy who proposed it didn’t get thrown out of the window like in the meme.
I thought the proposed plans had multiple level high speed rails inside?
Never mind commuter traffic, imagine how long it would take necessary commodities to the right places in a timely manner!
I never looked into it more than a tertiary “Holy shit that looks dumb,” and yet somehow it’s even dumber than I thought!
I mean, how is it any different to any other multi km wide city?
For one thing, you can avoid congestion.
Sorry, I mean those saying I hope you don’t need to get to the other side, or what if you move.
Like I said- if you need to get to the other side of a normal city, you can avoid congestion by taking a different route.
In a linear city, there is only one route. If there is a traffic jam or a train derailment in a linear city, there are no alternative routes. Not even for an ambulance.
I would assume you have two routes, one either side, both directions for this exact reason.
If anything it will be more reliable and cost effective as every mass transit can be used by anyone.
Their plan was to have most people commute by train and have a veritable army of self-driving trains. That’s easily the most well thought part of the harebrained idea.
Not just train
Hyperloop
You know the thing that totally exists and wasn’t a scam to stop California from installing high speed rail that would cut into a certain company’s EV sales.
Oh, I know that one - Tesla would solve it with hyperloop and boring /s