Prioritization of Primary & Secondary Road Networks
Client: Ministry of Transport
Location: Riyadh - Saudi Arabia
Services: Strategic and Urban Transport Planning / Transport Economics Studies / Transport Demand Models / GIS Integration
Status: Completed - 2011
Under the provision of the Ministry of Transportation, this study entailed the development and implementation of the multi-criteria analysis (MCA) framework which was adopted to prioritize a set of primary and secondary road schemes in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over the next 20 years. These schemes total nearly 25,000 km in length and more than USD 23 Billion in cost. They varied widely in nature, including for example the construction of new roads, the upgrade and improvement of existing ones, maintenance and many other types of works, and they span all 13 regions of the Kingdom.
The developed prioritization framework is referred to as the Saudi Arabia Road Prioritization (SARP) model and relied on a comprehensive GIS database in developing the road schemes’ priorities. In the SARP model, the performance of each road scheme on the different criteria was converted to weighted scores which were then aggregated to calculate the overall performance of the scheme. The weights were derived using Saaty’s Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP).
The project scope included:
- Revision of previous studies related to future road projects as well as socio-economic aspects that have impact on road priorities
- Development of a prioritization model that takes into account all traffic and socio-economic factors to define road implementation priorities
- Definition of future road expansion and advancement needed
- Preparation of a prioritization plan that defines road implementation program over the next 20-years (1430-1450 H)
- Presentation of the final results in a GIS model