Day One - Global Mobility Forum - AT (Arabian Time, GMT+03:00)
As urbanisation increases and user expectations evolve, cities are increasingly navigating how to move beyond fragmented design systems toward more integrated, human‑centred mobility ecosystems. Saudi Arabia is already investing heavily in transformational infrastructure. However, roads, public transport and parking are all planned by different authorities, funded from different budgets, procured on different cycles and operated by different organisations, even though people experience them as one journey.
The last-mile sector is facing a profound dual mandate: scale at unprecedented velocity while rapidly decarbonising operations. Globally, the last mile accounts for over 50% of total shipping costs and generates a disproportionate share of urban carbon emissions. As global e-commerce volumes surge toward multi-trillion-dollar heights, with escalating consumer demands for instantaneous filfilment, adopting integrated last-mile transformation programmes that treat delivery as a core component of commercial strategy is imperative. Saudi Arabia sits at the vanguard of this transformation. Last-mile delivery is no longer simply a logistics challenge. It is a strategic lever that influences growth, margin, customer loyalty, and long-term resilience. Driven by Vision 2030, backed by $100 billion national logistics strategy, the Kingdom is actively transforming itself from a traditional transit corridor with fragmented networks into a highly integrated, digitised, and automated global logistics powerhouse.
The traditional highway network is shifting from a passive grid of concrete and asphalt into a responsive, data-driven ecosystem. As global cities expand and freight volumes surge, surface transport infrastructure needs to reduce fatalities, manage congestion, and withstand environmental wear. Meeting these challenges requires moving far beyond standard civil engineering to focus on the convergence of smart highways and intelligent road safety systems. What does the integration of physical pavement with digital intelligence look like? What are the most cost-effective strategies for embedding advanced digital safety layers into legacy highways?
The pursuit of zero-casualty corridors is driving a profound convergence between physical transport infrastructure and digital machine intelligence. Historically, road safety relied on passive measures like guardrails, static signage, and post-accident emergency response. Today, the rapid evolution of smart highways and intelligent traffic management networks is shifting the safety paradigm from reactive mitigation to real-time, predictive prevention. By embedding distributed sensor arrays, computer vision, and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication nodes directly into the transit grid, modern roads are transforming into active safety partners. This discussion brings together infrastructure operators, technology pioneers, and policy strategists to analyse optimisation of traffic flow under extreme environmental stress, and measures needed to build a zero-fatality transport backbone.
The global movement of people and cargo is detaching from legacy, single-mode transport models to form a hyper-connected, multi-dimensional transit grid. As urban centers swell and consumer demands for instant delivery reach unprecedented heights, the physical movement layer must shift towards a fluid, demand-driven network. This evolution requires the seamless blending of high-speed mass transit, autonomous long-haul freight, regional aero-mobility, and intelligent last-mile distribution networks. How must physical hubs and arterial corridors change over the next decade to safely handle the co-existence of legacy human-driven fleets, autonomous trucks, and low-altitude aerial logistics? What immediate localised energy and charging infrastructure upgrades are mandatory to support the rapid electrification of heavy commercial transport corridors without destabilising municipal power grids? How can a hyper-connected movement layer be engineered to dynamically reroute passengers and high-priority cargo in real-time during extreme weather events, cyber threats or infrastructure failures?
The point where a vehicle stops is fast becoming the most critical bottleneck in urban mobility. As ride-hailing networks expand, e-commerce deliveries surge, demand for walkability and cycling increases, and personal vehicle fleets grow, the competition for physical space at the curb has triggered unprecedented congestion, double-parking, and lost economic productivity. Maximising urban throughput requires transforming the access and stopping layer into an automated, integrated system. How can city planners and municipal regulators fairly balance curb access between private commuters, public transit, high-turnover ride-hailing vehicles, and commercial e-commerce delivery fleets? When autonomous delivery robots and driverless ride-hailing fleets scale, what physical retrofits and digital communication nodes will the curb require to safely manage automated drop-offs?
The ultimate evolution of urban transport lies in binding separate networks into a single, unified mobility system. For decades, infrastructure engineering, vehicle movement, and spatial access have been managed by disconnected public entities and private operators, leading to fragmented passenger journeys, congested streets, and systemic inefficiencies. Maximising the potential of modern cities requires blending physical roadways, high-speed transit corridors, autonomous fleets, and dynamic curbside access points into a singular, responsive ecosystem. Conversations on day 1 will close by asking:
- Is One Mobility System necessary, and is it possible?
- What regulatory frameworks and jurisdictional updates are necessary to transition city transport into a single, cross-modal ecosystem?
- In a highly integrated system where infrastructure, movement, and access are completely codependent, how do you prevent a localised failure from cascading across the entire transport network?
- What systemic incentives can compel private sector competitors to pool their proprietary telemetry data into a shared, public-private operational brain?