Optimizing Riyadh’s traffic management with real-time data insights
Success Story
Managing traffic in a fast-growing city like Riyadh is a complex challenge. With over 7 million residents and millions more visiting each year, efficient mobility is essential for safety and economic productivity. Riyadh’s transportation authority, with Norconsult and TomTom, is leveraging real-time traffic data to manage congestion, optimize infrastructure, and enhance urban mobility.
Norconsult, in partnership with TomTom, worked with the City of Riyadh’s transportation authority to develop a real-time traffic dashboard that monitors the entire city. By integrating TomTom’s real-time floating car data, Norconsult gave the City of Riyadh a powerful planning platform that tracks congestion patterns, evaluates junction performance and pinpoints traffic bottlenecks in real time. This has enabled the city to reduce delays, optimize land use and make infrastructure investments based on real-world movement data. The dashboard played a critical role during Riyadh Season, helping planners manage over 4 million trips to a single venue and improve access for millions of visitors across the six-month festival.
Beyond congestion management, these data-driven insights also support long-term urban development. By analyzing traffic patterns over time, city planners can target emerging trends, anticipate future demands and design infrastructure that accommodates Riyadh’s rapid growth. This proactive approach ensures that investments in roads, public transport, and mobility solutions are not just reactive but strategically aligned with the city’s vision for a smarter, more connected future.
Transforming traffic management with data-driven insights
Riyadh has traditionally relied on in-road sensors to measure traffic flow. While effective in certain areas, these sensors do not scale across the city and provide limited visibility into congestion patterns. Recognizing this challenge, the Riyadh transportation authority partnered with Norconsult to implement a more advanced, data-centric approach using TomTom’s floating-car data and analytics tools.
Via this collaboration, Riyadh now has access to real-time and historical traffic data, helping city planners monitor congestion, analyze demand patterns, and optimize road networks. The city can now proactively manage traffic, reducing delays and improving overall mobility.
Enhancing city-wide mobility and event management
One of the most significant applications of this data is in managing traffic during Riyadh Season, an annual festival that attracts millions of visitors. By analyzing origin-destination data, authorities can identify congestion hotspots, adjust road infrastructure, and deploy shuttle services more effectively. This ensures smoother traffic flow, better emergency response times, and improved public satisfaction.
Beyond large-scale events, Norconsult and TomTom’s data solutions help monitor 50 key junctions at any given time, rotating across 2,600 junctions over two years. This enables the city to proactively detect traffic bottlenecks and implement targeted interventions to improve flow.
Measurable impact on urban planning and safety
Optimized emergency response: Using TomTom’s reachability API, the city has improved ambulance and law enforcement response times by identifying high-priority zones for new facilities.
Data-driven infrastructure planning: Traffic insights from TomTom have enabled Riyadh to address congestion at critical intersections, ensuring long-term traffic efficiency.
Improved public perception: By tracking Riyadh’s congestion benchmarks compared to global cities, the government can demonstrate measurable improvements in mobility.
A model for future urban mobility
With Norconsult and TomTom’s solutions, Riyadh has taken a proactive approach to traffic management, setting a benchmark for other cities facing similar urban mobility challenges. By leveraging real-time traffic insights, the city continues to enhance its road networks, improve safety and facilitate seamless transportation for its growing population.