Waiting for the bus : a strategy for approaching the regulation of public transportation in Kuwait

Abstract

There is an increasing concern about the growth of car dependence in the Middle East and its associated negative impacts on cities, including economic and environmental factors, urban form, and lifestyle. Kuwait, having undergone massive infrastructure developments after the discovery of oil, is considered a prime example of an automobile-dependent city-state in the region. Public transportation is irregular and limited and has been traditionally aimed at the lower-class migrant population rather than the residents of the country as a whole. Planning and regulating for the existing public transportation is minimal and siloed. Against this background, this thesis evaluates the current state of public transportation in Kuwait and develops a framework to assess industry structure models for the regulation of public transportation. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Riyadh are used as cases representing a unified public model, closely supervised private model, and loosely supervised private model, respectively. Using the framework and the cases, it recommends the adoption of the closely supervised private model for the Kuwaiti context. This thesis also provides five recommendations on how to push for regulatory change for KuwaitCommute, a local social initiative intent on bringing awareness to Kuwait's public transportation system and the country's traffic epidemic. However, further research is still required when looking at how various industry models enforce their respective regulatory regimes.