Title: Feasibility of Transport Demand Management through a Bottom-Up Planning Approach
Abstract: 1. INTRODUCTION The majority of developing countries have encountered increasing urban growth and physical expansion during the past few decades. The increase in car ownership and use is a result of this trend which has consequently led to car dependent cities. Such cities experience daily traffic congestion and, subsequently, environmental, economic and social problems. For managing these undesirable problems, Transport Demand Management (TDM) strategies have been suggested as an efficient solution in some countries. To overcome traffic congestion problems, numerous policies have been put forward so far. However, it is believed that TDM offers an effective and economical solution. In contrast with infrastructure development and long-term planning, which are associated with huge spending, TDM can improve the situation through modifying the travel behavior of trip-makers. However, TDM implementation needs an attention to social and cultural contexts. The bottom-Up planning (BUP) approach offers a system which can encourage public participation in TDM implementation. This research attempts to evaluate a set of TDM policies and define their priorities through a Bottom-up Planning Approach. The empirical materials for this research include interviews (using questionnaires) with individual experts involved in urban transport planning processes in Shiraz, south of Iran. Shiraz, the capital of Fars Province, with a population of 1.4 million is the sixth most populous city of the country. According to a recent survey, the shares of the different modes of travel in this city are as follows: personal cars and taxis: 60 percent, buses: 30 percent, and the other modes: 10 percent which is an unsustainable trend in a longer term. A set of policy measures as solutions to traffic congestion was provided in three different categories: sustainable transport; engineering; and traffic restraint. Then the AHP and weighted scoring methods were applied in order to find the most preferred policies for the study area. 2. BACKGROUND While the strategies of conventional transport planning have focused on the 'Predict and Provide' model, sustainable transport approach, on the other hand, offers strategies based on the 'Debate and Decide' approach. TDM is a new approach put forward to mitigate traffic problems in both short-term and long-term periods. The Transportation Research Board (TRB) meeting (1994) emphasized the significance of research and innovation in TDM for the first time (Saleh and Sammer, 2009). In general, TDM is a set of strategies and policies offered in hope of decreasing the travel demand (especially single occupant and personal vehicles) or redistributing such demands in alternate time or space. Sustainable transport objectives could hardly be achieved only through technological advances. To decrease car dependency and overcome the increasing concern about energy consumption in transport, it is important to take into account the TDM policies along with new technologies, and economic motivation. On the other hand, the success of TDM policies is tightly intertwined with public acceptance (Saleh and Sammer, 2009). Although an integrated transport policy is essential to achieving more sustainable development, integrating the principles of sustainable development and the practice of decision-making on transport have raised significant challenges. The operationalization of these terms raises complex political decisions together with stable social values, on the one hand, and a varied set of socio-economic and environmental opportunity costs on the other (Hull, 2005). The Bottom-Up Planning (BUP) Approach explains that hierarchical decision-making is of little efficiency for resolving urban concerns. BUP is the codification of the existing social experiences, sociological theoretical knowledge, and empirical findings into sets of procedures in organizing human activities in order to achieve a well-defined goal (Cernea, 1992). …
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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