By Malak Monir

The extensive road work currently taking place in Education City will continue for another three years estimated due to the construction of Qatar Foundation’s “People Mover System,” according to Kevin Murray, the head of security at the Qatar Foundation’s Health, Safety, Security, and Environment Directorate.

“The vision within the next three years is that no private vehicles, for students, staff, faculty, will be allowed into Education City at all,” Murray said. “The only vehicles that will be allowed on the roads will be the service vehicles that are essential to bring in.” These include construction and delivery vehicles.

The People Mover System is a network of trams that will connect the various facilities within Education City. Once it is completed, it will allow students, faculty, and staff to park in designated spots but they will then have to either walk, cycle or take the tram to their destination, according to Jassim Telefat, the director of technical affairs at the Qatar Foundation Capital Projects Directorate.

We are currently constructing some of the car parks in the northeast, southeast and western parts of campus. Each multi-story car park will hold 2,000 or 3,000 parked cars of people who can then take the people mover system to get to the buildings, Telefat said.

There are also plans to build underground stations connected to the national railway line, which will allow travel in and out of Education City, according to Telefat.

One of the goals of the project is to minimize the number of cars moving in Education City while at the same time changing the infrastructure to allow for the new buildings currently under construction, such as the new Northwestern University in Qatar campus, according to Rasha Al-Sulaiti, project development manager at Capital Projects.

The current bus schedule, along with the QNCC parking situation is considered a temporary solution, which Al-Sulaiti said is re-evaluated each month. According to Qatar Foundation, this arrangement is a necessary measure.

Students, however, have faced issues with the system.

“There is no supervision (of the bus drivers) at all. They leave all the responsibilities to the bus drivers, and the drivers basically control the time of the students,” said Abdullah Jameel, a communication sophomore at Northwestern University in Qatar. “They don’t have (fixed schedules) for when to move or when to not, so basically you have to wait and wait and wait until the bus is full or there’s no one in the bus and they just leave.”

As of September 7th, Gate 5 has been reopened and female student pick-up and drop-off will be allowed through Gate 17. Male students will still need to use the buses to and from QNCC.