During the past decades, the city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia has witnessed dramatic changes in its urban
area, population and transportation. To better understand the relationship between urban growth and
transportation, this paper aims to quantify and analyze the spatial–temporal relationship between urban
growth and transportation for Jeddah using Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System
(GIS) approaches. In this paper, eight urban growth and transportation indices were developed to analyze
the relationship between spatial–temporal urban growth and transportation changes: (1) annual urban
spatial expansion index, (2) land use change index, (3) population density index, (4) transportation infrastructure
expansion index, (5) road density index, (6) road area density index, (7) urban trips density
index, and (8) modal split change index. The results show that in the past four decades (1964–2007),
Jeddah has experienced a rapid population growth, a large spatial expansion, rapidly changing land
use and expanding transportation infrastructure. As transportation infrastructure expands with population
growth, this expansion has not been able to accommodate increases in travel demand. This has led to
an increase in urban congestion. The analysis further shows that transportation infrastructure expansion
has stimulated Jeddah’s urban spatial expansion and residential area growth. The enormous spatial
expansion has also caused significant changes in the daily share of travel modes. The developed indicators
in the paper bridge the knowledge gap between urban growth and transportation research, as the
results of this study provide a rich understanding of the relationship between urban growth and
transportation in rapidly growing cities.