The city of Dakhla is one of the few cities in the Kingdom that has made the urban travel plan a cornerstone of its urban planning, as an anticipatory approach intended to control the constantly increasing urban traffic flows.

Thus, the Urban Agency of Oued Eddahab-Ousserd launched in 2011 an anticipatory strategic study on urban traffic for the 2020 horizon, aiming to develop a plan to prevent the problems that may arise due to exponential urban growth and rapid expansion of the city.

The study sets among its objectives the regulation of traffic in the city, the organisation of parking spaces for vehicles and trucks and the calming of urban traffic, confided to the MAP the regional director of the Agency, Ms. Hayat Sabri.

It is a pioneering anticipatory study, Dakhla being one of the few cities to integrate urban travel into its development plan, she affirmed.

After highlighting the imperative of finding a balance between the urban travel plan and that of urban planning, Ms. Sabri considered that this balance constitutes a major challenge for modern agglomerations confronted with considerable traffic flows. Hence, she insisted, the obligation to bring new ideas and solutions to urban travel problems allowing an adequacy between urban development and urban traffic.

The bet is to reconcile fluidity and quality of traffic by ensuring the reduction of traffic jams and ensuring road safety, she emphasised, noting that the urban travel plan now occupies a place of choice in the development of planning documents.

While noting the current absence of dysfunctions in terms of urban traffic in Dakhla, the regional director of the agency noted that the city is experiencing a constant dynamic that calls for an anticipatory strategy to avoid travel problems in the future.

The agency is working, to this end, in consultation with local actors, on the completion of this study for the implementation of an urban travel plan for the 2020 horizon capable of managing and regulating traffic flows at the city level, she said.

The plan also aims at the valorisation of public space, the optimal organisation of transport means and the adaptation of urban development and infrastructure projects with the traffic dynamic, indicated Ms. Sabri, noting that the first diagnosis of this study reports the absence of a road network connecting certain districts with the city centre due to the rapid development of economic housing, particularly in the north and west of the city.

Among the challenges raised by the study, the official also highlighted the problems due to the access of heavy goods vehicles to the city centre and the lack of road infrastructure, pedestrian crossings and car parks, stressing that the next phase of the study consists of proposing concrete solutions to these problems and developing projects to accompany the development that urban traffic is experiencing in the city.