On track at last!

I don’t make castles in the air as my dreams are closer to reality.

In fact, with time my dreams do evolve and become tangible and that’s where the beauty of my dreaming lies,” says Mr Mohammad Al Asfoor, CEO of the House of Designer Shaik and the man who presented the plans for Bahrain’s monorail a decade ago.
“I was an enthusiastic young Bahraini then, full of energy and filled with the need to do something that made Bahrain a forerunner among the upcoming economies of the Gulf.
“I used to live in downtown Manama on Shaikh Abdullah Road and imagined the modern Manama with a monorail on top of the highest highway that is the King Faisal Highway.
“I worked on the monorail concept for almost nine years and developed the plan which included seven hubs spread all over Bahrain,” says Mr Al Afsoor, his voice tinged with enthusiasm.
He explains how according to his plan each hub would have been built around a theme; an Arabian Desert theme for one, pearl diving for another, an alien touchdown for the third and so forth. “At the time I felt that Bahrain’s architecture needed an identity of its own and I wanted to highlight our individuality by creating stunning architectural hubs that underscored our culture and would be a tourist stop on its own.”
Mr Al Afsoor’s plans for a monorail presented a multi-faceted solution addressing the issue of traffic congestion and cultural and social aspect of a mélange of communities residing in Bahrain.
“Manama was the hub of banking and business community and with time it would be but natural for the existing infrastructure to fall short of demand. Also there were so many vibrant communities residing in Bahrain that I wanted to create a communication link between them.
“Communities in Bahrain are so fragmented and my ambition was to integrate them by creating a common ground, a sort of a majlis. So I was actually thinking beyond just traffic and transport. Also you had to entice people to actually park their Mercedes or BMW to use the monorail and for that you had to create a shift in people’s mind by creating something spectacular which served the practical purpose too.”
“In 1996 while I was working on the monorail project, I designed a card with the artistic illusion of the Manama Monorail. 4,000 cards were printed and mailed across a cross section of the community like government bodies, banks and private enterprises. The response was immense and prompted a constructive multilevel discussion at different levels.” The grandiose monorail plan made headlines in local Press and the mastermind behind it received great kudos in the regional Press too. The Press called it ‘The flying carpet of Bahrain’. From 1997 till 2000, Mr Al Afsoor met with various ministries presenting his high-tech idea and it was dubbed as the design of the future and frustratingly was put on hold … until now.
Mr Al Afsoor does not regret the time and effort spent on the monorail project because he enjoyed every minute developing his concept. Mr Al Afsoor went as far out to Europe to attend technical workshops and learned the mechanical, engineering and financial potential behind the project.
The recent boom that has taken Bahrain by storm has affected the country in more ways than one. With economic activity has come the bane of traffic congestion, something that Mohammad Al Asfoor envisaged a decade ago.
Bahrain is now planning to build a multi-million dinar state-of-the-art monorail by 2030 but the light rail system will be in place as early as 2011.
Future travel demands of the country will increase manifold with projects like Bahrain Bay and Bahrain Financial Harbour coming up.
“Today the most crucial issue on our road network is the traffic problem,” said Mr Nayef Al Kalali, under-secretary of public works affairs at the Housing and Works Ministry.
“It is clear that there are transport problems and issues still to be addressed, notably congestion on the urban highway system, parking problems, the limited extent of the existing public transport system and the intensive nature of many recent developments,” he added.
Ms Huda A Fakhroo, head of road planning and design directorate at the Housing and Works Ministry while commenting on the monorail project said, “This is a major project which focuses on improving the infrastructure. We are looking for an alternative to private vehicles that is the primary mode of travelling. This would mean there would be a metro or monorail system, light rail, bus rapid transit depending on the surveys and analyses. The project would be an effective solution to avoid the traffic gridlocking in the future.”
Mr Al Asfoor says that he has exchanged ideas with the Ministry of Housing and Works and there is a constant dialogue with them regarding the monorail project.
His dream did not bear fruition a decade ago but his idea is catching up although perhaps not at the scale
that he had envisaged. Mohammad Al Asfoor, however,  is surely a visionary, a man before his time.

Special report by Asma Salman