TRAFFIC IMPACT STUDY AT THE RASHID MALL SHOPPING CENTER IN DAMMAM

Area of activity
TRAFFIC AND MOBILITY

Service
Mobility and traffic studies

Client
Al Rashid Trading & Contracting Company

Scope

• Traffic Forecasting
• Mall Trip Generation Analysis
• 10-year Demand Forecast
• Vissim simulation models
• Traffic Impact Study
• Mitigation Measures

Duration
2020

Al Rashid Mall has been a busy retail, leisure and restaurant space in the heart of Al Khobar for many years. The proposed expansion of the southern entrance to the mall will involve the modification of parking areas – both exterior and interior – along with new vehicle entrance/exit ramps to access the basement parking lot.

DAIR carried out two types of actions for this project. Firstly, several design alternatives for parking spaces were proposed, not only relocating and optimizing the parking spaces themselves, but also the accesses from the outside and the internal circulation directions.

Secondly, a traffic study was carried out to test the impact of the expansion of the southern area of the building in order to mitigate any conflictive points in the accesses to the parking lots, and to evaluate the traffic service levels in 10 years’ time. For this study, traffic gauging and other data collection was carried out using GPS navigators, and different scenarios were tested using Vissim microsimulation models.

In this way, not only were different parking and circulation design alternatives proposed, but they were also tested using models to propose mitigation measures for the 2033 horizon year, setting safety and accessibility to the shopping center.