Creating a Smart Transit Option for a Car-Dependent City: The Case of Jeddah City

Abstract

The city of Jeddah faces an increase in motorization and car dependency in transportation systems, resulting in increased traffic congestion and more negative effects such as an increase in pollution and car accidents. Nowadays, the citizens are not in favour of using public transportation services due to the lack of several factors, which include but are not limited to mal-planning in the land use distribution causing long journeys from one destination to another, quality of hygiene, safety, destination and location, affordability, and other factors that this research aspires to determine and highlight. The interpretation of "smart city" should not be limited to using advanced technology in transportation but should also include the smartness in adopting different transit options to satisfy the different social needs of the different community sectors. The execution methodology of this research is based on exploring the current understanding of Transit-Oriented Developments (TOD) that contributed to bettering the transportation issues that occurred in car-dependent cities. Following that, an empirical case study of Jeddah city will be conducted to divide the city into homogeneous zones supported by a qualitative data gathering of different stakeholder’s opinion that aims to gain a better understanding of Jeddah's condition with public transportation modes up to this date. The city of Jeddah is experiencing a surge of car dependency, given the increasing traffic congestion, which causes the city to suffer from increased pollution and vehicle accidents.