Public transport towards sustainability in midsized municiplaities

Abstract

The concept of sustainable urban mobility is related with the movement of people and goods in urban areas. However, this perspective is restrictive when the purpose is to address the problem of sustainability to an urban system of transport, in a big city, or as in this work, in urban areas of small and midsized municipalities, particularly in relation to the evaluation of economic, social, environmental and governance dimensions of the sustainable mobility. The assessment of mobility in urban areas implies the characterization of such areas, particularly in terms of geographic and socio-economic perspectives in order to understand and justify some issues of the existing relation between land use and transports. The framework of the transport system is related with the size of the municipalities. In this work an evaluation model of sustainability is proposed - that can be applied to evaluate and compare the level of sustainability in different urban areas of a system of public transports by bus, which can be also applied toother modes of transport. The model consists of a previous selection of indicators that characterize all dimensions of sustainability, which are then used in a multicriteria analysis. The weight of the indicators is defined by different groups of stakeholders related with the public transport system, mainly those concerned with decision-making process to promote its use at a local level, with the intention of defining priorities for improvement of public transport.