Planning of National Transport Infrastructure
In the Islamic Countries
9
2. Literature Review: Conceptual Framework for the Planning
Practices Regarding National Transport Infrastructure
2.1. Introduction
NTI planning, being a complex process with multiple interdependencies, has many aspects,
elements and options. It consists of policies, goals, objectives, programmes and sets of projects
that together provide the planning framework. Within this planning framework, individual
projects go through the process of identification, selection, appraisal and approval. The aspect
of preparing a National Transport Infrastructure Plan mostly falls into the part of the planning
framework known as programming if it is at the level of master planning.
2.1.1. The Aim of Literature Review
The purpose of a literature review is to critically analyse current thinking and research on the
topic in question to identify gaps that could be filled through further research. In this case the
review is aimed at providing evidence of the state of the art of transport planning to provide a
framework to make reasonable recommendations to improve transport planning practices in
OIC countries and also identify where further study may be needed.
2.1.2. NTI in Literature
Mackie (2014) refers to the factors influencing NTI planning and groups them into three
categories: vision, pressure and analysis, as shown i
Figure 1: Decisions and Judgements are affected by visions, pressures and analyses
Source: Mackie (2014)
From a bottomup perspective, analysis is the field of technocratic assessment, pressure is where
public consultation takes place and vision is related to the scene of politics. It is said that projects
push the plans as much as plans push the projects. This may certainly be the case for so called
mega projects that are large enough to become game changers or scene setters around which
new planning paradigms are created. Another dimension is that politicians are in many
countries the main clients for projects, even disregarding prevailing plans to achieve their