Aqaba Bus Station

The development of the Aqaba Bus Station is part of the wider Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority (ASEZA) masterplan that sets a mixed use urban development pattern for this relatively under developed area by the year 2020. The site is framed by the Bay of Aqaba and the Granite Mountains.

Buro Happold was invited by our local Jordanian partner project architect Tibah to provide traffic engineering expertise to support the competition bid for the design of the new bus station. The brief was for a bus station catering for interchange between city services and inter-urban services linking Aqaba to the capital Amman, with supporting retail and other passenger support services.  In addition to a facility accommodating 40 bays, the brief required extensive public and private parking areas for staff and visitors, reflecting the role of the new station as the origin point for large numbers of tourist trips.

The site is strategically located at the arrival point to the city. Its edges are defined by the Desert Highway linking Ababa to Amman, the airport road connecting the site to the King Hussein International Airport and the railroad running along south-east edge of the site. Our team produced an access and circulation strategy that minimised the operational impact on the existing junction, whilst also ensuring minimum delay to buses moving to and from the new station. We also addressed the movement in parallel of large volumes of passenger cars and taxis.

The concept developed by our team was selected by the Aqaba Development Authority (ADA) as the winning competition entry and the Tibah/Buro Happold joint venture was appointed to develop the design.

• Transport hub interchange between city services and inter-urban services linking Aqaba to the capital Amman
• Focal point for tourist trips in area
• Part of an area masterplan development to 2020

Related Disciplines

• Transport
• Transport planning