Saudi Railways has officially launched the bidding process for the design and construction of the Riyadh section of the Saudi Continental Bridge project. The investment scale of this section is about 7 billion US dollars, and the bidding deadline is March 29, 2026.

The Riyadh connecting line for this tender is approximately 35 kilometers long and adopts a double track railway standard, running north-south through the core area of the capital. In the future, it will be interconnected with the north-south railway trunk line and the eastern road network. The project adopts an integrated design and construction mode, covering track laying, elevated bridges and roadbed structures, pipeline relocation, communication signal systems, and related mechanical and electrical supporting facilities.

As a national strategic project in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Continental Bridge is planned to build a new approximately 900 kilometer route from Riyadh to Jeddah, with Riyadh as the hub. At the same time, the existing route from Riyadh to Dammam will be upgraded, with a total length of over 1500 kilometers and a planned total investment of approximately 26.6 billion US dollars.

In the preliminary work of the project, Chinese civil engineering and other Chinese funded enterprises, as core members of the consortium, deeply participated in the research of the route scheme, engineering technology demonstration, and exploration of investment and financing models. Due to the inability to reach consensus on key terms such as localization ratio, the consortium did not sign a formal construction agreement with the Saudi side.

As the project transitions to a segmented bidding model, Chinese enterprises need to compete with other international contractors if they want to continue participating. It is understood that Saudi Arabia is still in communication with Chinese companies interested in using a public-private partnership model to participate in development, in order to reserve a window for future cooperation. Keywords: Middle East news and information, railway

Since its first proposal in 2004, the Saudi Arabia Continental Bridge project has been delayed multiple times due to issues such as land acquisition coordination, route optimization, and large investment scale. In recent years, Saudi Railways has adjusted its strategy, clearly promoting in stages, prioritizing the implementation of key sections, and exploring diversified financing models such as PPP. The Riyadh section has initiated the bidding process, marking the substantive implementation phase of the project.Editor/Gao Xue