68% of the population of Duhok Governorate lives in Duhok and Semel districts.
In April 2021 the MASAR team held meetings with various stakeholders in the transportation sector to discuss the most relevant road safety intervention for the MASAR project to offer support. One of the recommendations was to enable public transportation starting with a 15 kilometres line connecting Domiz and Duhok. The idea was to serve the people in two of the biggest refugees’ camps in the region, seven camps with internally displaced persons, and the most vulnerable people from the host community.
The MASAR team first did a community outreach survey on household travel in Domiz. This fed into a justification for a Bus Rapid Transit system and no other transportation methods. Another request to MASAR was on green road design, aiming to develop the capacity of a design team to design the two-sided mountainous road to improve the highway network and reconstruct the existing corridor in the governorate with the Turkish border to enhance economic development.
The support that MASAR gave on the Bus Rapid Transit System included a technical plan for the road lane. While assessing the options and affordability of a bus connection, similar international cases were studied. All recommendations were endorsed by the relevant stakeholders; Directorate of Transportation, University of Duhok, Directorate of Traffic in Duhok and the bus connection plan has been submitted to the High Road Committee in the Duhok Governorate headquarters for endorsement and later implementation.
The road design study comprised selection of the right track, in parallel with a capacity development course, in which 25 engineers from several related government entities participated. The track has been mapped and a geophysics survey war carried out. The final road design has been submitted to the government for implementation.
