FOMENTO provided with Commercial Advisory Services to the Spanish company Telvent for the development of this project, conceived to modernize and develop the traffic management infrastructure and systems for the city of Beirut, Lebanon.
The project entailed:

• Designing and construction of a new Traffic Control Center to manage and analyze Beirut's traffic using a Global Management real-time System that incorporates traffic management, geographic information, facility maintenance, and simulation components.

• Provide a real-time traffic control system that enables optimization of traffic-flow, incorporating a simulation and planning module that enables the development and testing of traffic control strategies, as well as for the simulation of accidents, disasters, evacuations, demonstrations and their corresponding action plans. This system is currently installed in some of the world's busiest cities such as Sao Paolo (Brazil), Fushun (China), HoChiMin City (Vietnam) and Madrid (Spain).

• Provide with a Geographic Information System to control intersections, providing up-to-date information on situations at crossroads, equipment inventory, traffic plans, accident statistics and data from the metering points and traffic detectors, thereby making situation-analysis and decision-making fast and efficient.

• Installation of a solution to collect and process traffic-light violations and generate reports. This solution not only enables statistical control of the infractions committed at intersections, but also helps in finding ways to reduce accident rates.

The implementing agency is the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR). The project is supported by the World Bank and other funding agencies, among which are the European Investment Bank, the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development and the Islamic Development Bank.

This project is within the Urban Transport Development Project (UTDP) focused on providing the city of Beirut and the Greater Beirut Area with a basic institutional framework and the critical investments needed to maximize the efficiency of the existing urban transport infrastructure. The greater metropolitan area of Beirut has a population of about 1.3 million, and suffers from severe traffic congestion, which results in lost productivity and deteriorating air quality.

Under this project, the Greater Beirut Area has developed an effective traffic control system, reduced congestion on major corridors, and put in place an on-street parking management system.