Urban sustainable transportation indicators for global comparison

Transportation has significant and long lasting economical, social and environmental impacts, and so is an important dimension of urban sustainability. Some attempts have been made to develop sustainable transport indicators, STI. A few studies actually apply STI to compare sustainability among various world cities. In this paper various world cities ranked in terms of urban sustainable transport composite index. The study database is created from UITP databank: Millennium cities database for sustainable mobility or MCDST. Firstly sustainable transportation indicators were selected by reviewing past researches. Some indicators are edited or redefined. Consequently 9 STI were developed, 3 indicators in each 3 groups of environmental, economical and social. Then composite index was also suggested by combination of 9 standardized indicators. According to composite index various cities were compared. Finally some important factors affecting urban transportation sustainability were determined by using correlation analyses between composite index and cities characterizes. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.