Transportation Planning for the Eastern Province Residential Development
Ostprovinz, Saudi Arabia, 2013 - 2014
- Client: Saudconsult
- Timeframe: 2013 - 2014
- Planning Area: 1,500 ha
- Use: Residential Development, Mixed-Use
The Ministry of Housing of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Ministry of Housing, MOH) plans to implement 500,000 housing units for the Saudi population in the next years. As development areas, among others, several areas in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia were selected.
AS+P Albert Speer + Partner GmbH developed as a sub - contractor of Saudconsult - Saudi Consulting Services urban master plans for six planning sites with a total area of 1,800 ha. The single site size ranged from about 30 ha to 700 ha. In addition to the realization of housing units, the provision of public facilities (schools, retail, sport facilities, parks , etc. ) was also an important aspect.
While preparing urban master plans the early consideration of traffic is of particular importance. The planning of a hierarchical road network is crucial for the distribution of traffic and thus securing the internal and external access. On basis of the planned land uses as well as national and international parameters AS+P calculated the expected traffic generation and developed a traffic model to estimate the traffic distribution (OD-Matrices). The estimated traffic were allocated to the planned transportation network and analized. Here the connections to the surrounding higher-level road network were taken into particular consideration.
Further key aspects of the transportation planning were the implementation of a hierarchic system for pedestrians and the provision of sufficient and well located parking possibilities.