I use a very linear mall style layout. But the difference in my design is each module juts out orthogonal to the main bus and tiles linearly. So as the bus grows, each "spine" grows outward to increase capacity. But it can't continue indefinitely - eventually the module-bus bandwith bottleneck dominates, and I have to start a totally separate bus in parallel.

Neom will run into the same problem, except without the ability to first scale laterally. There's a reason logistical systems aren't a straight fuckin line. Cities are logistics machines.

I think the average Factorio noob has put more thought into layout design than the architects of Neom.

I can think off many ideas off the top of my head which would be striking, revolutionary, and less dumb than a line when it comes to logistics. Hell, even a circle (of limited width) would be better, as your worst case transit time immediately is cut in half.