Planning of National Transport Infrastructure
In the Islamic Countries
3
the boxes”, followed by Malaysia even though Malaysia does not have both a national transport
policy and a multimodal national transport model.
Policy recommendations
Although it is not suggested that NTI planning problems or solutions are the same for all OIC
countries, the study comes up with some specific policy recommendations for improving NTI
planning based on the findings of the study and good practice examples. The recommendations
are summarised below.
Framework area Policy recommendations
1. Political and
legislation
 A national transport policy needs to be developed before developing
an NTMP in order to provide a strategic direction towards common
objective and goals to be followed by sectoral plans and programs.
 Both policy and plans should be developed from within and to avoid
outsourcing the entire process to consultants, in order to ensure buy-
in and ownership.
 Transport plans should be mandatory and have legal force through
legislation.
2. Institutional and
organizational
 The institutional capacity needs to be built by training or education of
government officials and professionals to increase the effectiveness of
the current planning procedures and techniques.
 The rule of subsidiarity should apply, transport master planning
should be centralised and subsector and urban planning
decentralised.
 Transport planning agencies must be multidisciplinary and cross
sectoral to apply a holistic approach, to ensure integration between
modes of transport and adequately cover cross cutting issues.
3. Technical factors  NTI plans should integrate land use planning and multi-modal
transport planning including non-motorised transport.
 NTI plans should be outcome not output based.
 Methods to prioritise project should be in place, such as socio-
economic evaluation and cost-benefit analysis.
 A national multi-modal transport model should be developed and be
robust for external effects and shocks and systemic risks.
4. Procedural factors
and financing
 Develop common guidelines for project appraisal and assessment for
the OIC members.
 Make NTI plans publicly available and communicate them.
 Strengthening of procedures regarding public consultation and
stakeholder participation.
 Improving the transparency of the public consultation process.
 Increasing the involvement of private sector by enhancing the market
environment for private sector participation.
 Ensure that the planning horizon of NTI plans is 15 to 25 years, and
that updates come on time.
 Apply the use of the pricing instrument in view of optimization,
allocation and funding. In order to ensure a sustainable financing, a
greater share should be funded from road user charges (user pay
principle).