Public Transportation Problems in Saudi Arabia

This research aims to identify and address the existing public transportation problems in Saudi Arabia and recommend strategies for improvement. The population growth and increased motorization have led to traffic congestion in urban areas. The government has approved public transport plans, but a holistic approach is needed. The research objectives include identifying problems, understanding factors affecting the system, recommending strategies, and suggesting areas for immediate attention.

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Research Background
The social and transportation sector plays an important role in the development of the
socio-economic condition in Saudi Arabia. However, a wide range of present issues should
be tackled in the near future so as to ensure sustainability. The rate of growth in population
size and income have created a faster growth in motorization which resulted in increased
traffic congestion in Saudi Arabian urban locations. There is an urgency for expanding a safe
and more effective urban transport system within the country to support economic and
population growth. By the end of 2030, the population of Riyadh alone is expected to
increase from 5.4 million to 8 million (Taylan & Demirbas, 2016). Also, the five other cities
have million people each which are expanding at a rapid rate. This has led the government to
approve public transport plans in Makkah, Riyadh, Jeddah, Madinah and Dammam. Investing
billions of dollar for upgrading and developing systems in order to widen the roads and create
a higher cost mast transit system. However, this happened to be not so adequate singular
solution due to which a greater holistic approach is needed to be adopted. There are many
other existing problems in the country transportation system which including poor access to
the mass transit system thereby resulting in increasing dependency over private cars over
public transports.
Research Aim
The purpose of the present research is to understand the existing public transportation
problems in Saudi Arabia and recommend a few strategies to address the identified issues.
Research objectives
The main objective of this research study are as follows:
 To identify the existing problems within the public transportation system in Saudi
Arabia
 To gain details and understand the factors affecting the public transportation system in
Saudi Arabia
 To recommend a few strategies for overcoming the challenges and establish a better
public transportation system

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 To suggest area of transportation that requires immediate attention.
Research Rationale
In order to introduce a successful public transport system, it is much necessary to
integrate all the tools within a larger transport system and also pre-empt any challenges faced
by the commuter while availing public transportation. At the same time planning for the
urban transportation system is a complex process. This requires a well-designed plan for
leveraging the experts over a various range of disciples other than engineering. This also
includes urban aesthetics, planning, environment, traffic management along with economic
and human behaviour (Aldalbahi & Walker, 2015). Since most cities lack this kind of
planning or capacity to deal with such complex projects, sub-optimal projects are often
preferred to minimise the traffic congestion. An improved public transport gets its road
widened and also flyover constructed. The appropriate low-cost options are subjected to a
lesser advanced system for the planners in front of the appeal of the high-cost facilities
(Sładkowski & Pamuła, 2016). The program that will be adopted to address the present issues
is going to acknowledge the model integration, financial, institutional and safety and
environmental dimensions for urban transport which would allow the authorities for
exploring the linkages along these dimensions.

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References
Aldalbahi, M., & Walker, G. (2015). Attitudes and policy implications of urban growth
boundary and traffic congestion reduction in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In International
Conference Data Mining.
Sładkowski, A., & Pamuła, W. (Eds.). (2016). Intelligent transportation systems-problems
and perspectives (Vol. 303). Springer International Publishing.
Taylan, O., & Demirbas, A. (2016). Forecasting and analysis of energy consumption for
transportation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Energy Sources, Part B: Economics,
Planning, and Policy, 11(12), 1150-1157.