ITS and Public Transportation were the focus of the 2^nd Gulf Road Association Conference held in Riyadh on 13-14 October 2009.

The conference was opened by Dr. Jubarah Bin Eid AlSuraisry, Minister of Transport; and Chaired by Eng. Abdullah Al-Mogbel, President of ITS-Arab and Deputy Minister of Transport, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Speakers from the Gulf region presented updates on key ITS and public transportation projects. The conference recommendations included the following:

• Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) deployments in major cities raise the efficiency of roads and reduce traffic accidents.

• Increasing the establishment of Traffic Management Centres (TMCs) contribute in raising the level of traffic safety and efficiency of public transport in the GCC countries.

• Unification of standardization, legislation and traffic information centres will improve road engineering and the efficiency of transport network between the GCC countries.

• The level and volume of traffic on urban roads in major cities require the allocation of specific lanes to public transport.

• Need to reserve land within the non-developed urban areas to facilitate the future light rail public transport network within the cities.

• Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) applications play an important role in managing public transportation fleets (and companies with large fleets) to raise operational efficiency.

• Advanced Traffic Information Centres in the GCC countries will play an important role in the exchange of the necessary information relevant to the movement of traffic.