The region of Dakar faces a major challenge in maintaining and developing accessibility to its employment, education, commercial, service and leisure areas. The configuration of the peninsula generates significant and unbalanced flows between the sectors of the Plateau and those of the suburbs. The periurbanization of the poorest, but also of a part of the middle classes, accentuates this phenomenon while at the same time, the rapid rise in motorization favors the use of the automobile. These various factors lead to a deterioration in traffic conditions, despite the construction of infrastructure. The expected population increase over the next 20 years required long-term planning to anticipate future displacement challenges.
The writing of the Urban Travel Policy Letter focused on making an assessment of the previous letter, written in 1996, to assess the orientations of the urban travel field, to list development proposals based on 30 actions and to develop an action plan based on three structuring projects (BRT, suburban railway line, tramway).