English Abstract
Abstract:
The urban population of Saudi Arabia is growing with few available modes of transportation. In turn, its cities are relying substantially on the cars. Saudi Arabia is intending to invest in alternative mobility options to cater ever growing transportation needs. Despite efforts being made by government towards smart mobility as an alternative mode, there are no comprehensive studies carried out in KSA for proposing framework design to integrate smart mobility into current transportation system. This stady aims to develop a comprehensive framework identifying smart mobility solutions, their challenges and all the major KSA initiatives and stakeholders toward smart mobility. After a comprehensive literature review, detailed research of government plans, initiatives and programs were selected to identify government's future plans and their selected smart solutions for achieving the goal of smart mobility based network. Questionnaire survey for common users (User survey) and mobility experts (Supplier survey) was used for the feedback towards smart mobility solutions.
It was found that public transport along with the autonomous vehicles and shared mobility are among the preferred smart solutions from the important government funded initiative programs. Some of the important findings from the research methodology show that the governance failures such as lack of integration between institutes, outdated polices and challenges of developmental costs cause complications and inefficiency of the smart mobility paradigm, especially at the implementation level. Interestingly, majority of the responders also said they would prefer cars for their personal trips due to car dependency for many years. Most unprepared organization for the smart mobility comes out to be private logistic companies. The multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) model was also created based on the inferred criteria from the choices of expert and common users. The result of the analysis cites safety as one of the most important aspects of smart mobility. Mobility experts also suggested to start with the Pilot projects for the smart mobility solutions before wide scale implementation. Lastly comprehensive framework was developed using study results for achieving transition towards smart mobility solutions with better understanding and clarity. The framework was further validated by key decision maker in transportation from government and private sector.
