Saudi Arabia Integrated Transportation Urban Plan

With rising urban populations and concerns about Saudi’s environmental and social stability, the government is implementing a National Transformation Program, part of which includes a number of pilot projects to demonstrate and implement best practice transportation, land use planning and traffic management strategies. IBI Group will assist local ministries in implementing these pilot projects, which together form the Integrated Transportation Urban Plan (ITUP).

While a number of plans already exist in key urban areas, there are significant inconsistencies in the way transportation facilities are planned, programmed and delivered. The key objective of this plan is to identify critical actions, including institutional reforms, that will result in closer integration between urban and transport planning functions across Saudi Arabia.

IBI Group developed the following Five Pillars that will serve as the basis for this ITUP:

• National Growth Centres – Confirming the respective roles of five main cities as mobility hubs, national gateways and ensuring connections between them are appropriate.
• Regional Connectivity – The next spatial level down addresses connections at the regional level, ensuring efficiency and equity through strengthened links between cities, towns and villages.
• Urban Form – Reinforcing that a city’s size, shape, density and existing infrastructure play a critical role in achieving balanced transportation and urban planning outcomes.
• Resilient Communities – At the finest spatial level, the neighbourhood, the main aim is to encourage resilient communities, prioritizing physical space for the most efficient travel modes, providing people-centric public realm, and embedding smart city technology throughout major urban areas.
• Function – Knowing all design solutions need to be context-sensitive and fit within the needs of the community at hand.

The ITUP is concerned with improving the level of integration between urban planning, human activities, the transport systems connecting those locations, and the management of those systems at the city level.