Riyadh

Riyadh has run centralised adaptive signal control for more than a decade, and bought something else in the same rack. The programme began in 2012 under the city's development authority; a 2015 contract deployed a traffic-management system with adaptive control at 350 of the busiest intersections, replacing fixed timings with video-detected, demand-based ones, and the commission's own description adds a second layer — 1,400 cameras on city entrances, ring roads and main junctions that read licence plates and flag vehicles wanted by security authorities, a city-operated network distinct from the national enforcement cameras. The 84 junctions of the later bus corridors were wired into the same control system. Every performance figure in circulation comes from the operator or its vendors, and commuters were still losing an average of 52 hours a year to congestion as of early 2025.

Then the city did something in an order almost nobody manages. The bus network launched in March 2023 and completed its phased rollout that December — 54 routes and 2,145 stops and stations, with the operating consortium counting 672 buses and the commission 679, owned by the royal commission and run by a joint venture of the national bus company and a French operator under a twelve-year contract — with journey planning, live tracking and QR ticketing in one app from the start, extended in 2025 with app-booked on-demand minibus zones feeding metro stations. The metro followed a year later, opening in phases from December 2024: six lines, 176 kilometres, 85 stations, all fully automated and run without onboard staff from central control rooms, and certified as the longest driverless metro network in the world. Because the buses and their app came first, fare and journey-planning integration existed on the metro's opening day rather than being retrofitted afterwards.

The newest layer prices the kerb, and planned for the consequence rather than discovering it. Riyadh Parking began in August 2024 with more than 24,000 paid spaces on commercial streets across twelve districts, run through solar-powered machines and an app with a fifteen-minute grace period, enforced by camera-equipped patrol vehicles rather than wardens on foot. A residential layer followed exactly a year later, aiming to manage more than 140,000 unpaid residential spaces, with residents issuing free digital permits for themselves and their guests through the same app against the national identity platform. Pricing a commercial kerb pushes parking into the streets behind it; the residential permit scheme was shipped explicitly to stop that spillover, which makes Riyadh one of the few cities in this atlas where the displacement was designed for in advance.