Resilient Urban Transport Systems: The Role of Transit-Oriented Development in the GCC Cities

An effective and resilient transport system is a crucial component of urban infrastructure. Its resilience has far-reaching implications, including facilitating economic growth, encouraging equity, ensuring sustainability, and mitigating the adverse impacts of climate change. Resilient transport systems can endure and recover from various sources of disruption, whether anticipated, such as natural disasters and extreme weather events, or unexpected incidents like accidents and other factors. However, the discussion on resilience in transportation systems is often limited to their ability to enable evacuation in extreme weather events overlooking the potential of transition toward more energy-efficient cities as a tool to create resilience. This chapter focuses on embedding resilience in the design of city systems using transit-oriented development (TOD) a concept that supports dense, mixed-use development around public transit stations. From a transport climate resilience perspective, TOD helps mitigate adverse environmental consequences as it increases energy efficiency and reduces greenhouse gas emissions in the city by reducing car use and increasing the use of energy-efficient transit ridership combined with walking and cycling. With increasing investment in Public Transit, the fast-urbanizing cities in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region can embed resilience by design in the city infrastructure. Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar have initiated national TOD strategies that Synergize with the operational mass transport systems in Dubai and Doha, and close to completion in Riyadh. Furthermore, other major cities in the GCC have similar large-scale initiatives in various stages of planning and implementation.