Alternative transit-oriented development evaluation in sustainable built environment planning

Abstract

Following the increase in urban population density and house prices in the 1970s, urban residents began searching for satisfactory living environments. With the construction of highways and advancements in motor vehicle technology, urban development began extending to suburban regions, a phenomenon which is referred to as urban sprawl. The negative external effects caused by urban sprawl, including inefficient land use and pollution, highlight several problems such as the disjunction between urban land use and transportation. To achieve sustainable transportation and resolve the aforementioned problems, we established the transit-oriented development (TOD) evaluation criteria and formulated the TOD site selection standard, which fulfills the principle of sustainable transportation. Thus, a solution to problems related to urban sprawl is proposed, which may serve as a reference for planning units in devising relevant processes.The fuzzy Delphi method was adopted to select TOD evaluation criteria satisfying the principle of sustainable transportation, and the fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) was applied to determine the weights of relevant planning criteria. The results show that all nine TOD evaluation criteria for sustainable transportation were supported by an expert consensus in the first phase of the study, indicating that all of the selected criteria were critical in the TOD evaluation. In the second phase, according to the weighted evaluation criteria, the environmental carrying capacity in high-density development was the most crucial evaluation criterion, whereas the least critical criterion was equality in residence accessibility. Finally, through the use of a geographical information system, the performance of each station on the Ankeng Line of the New Taipei City mass rapid transit (MRT) system was evaluated according to the TOD evaluation criteria. Combining the evaluation with the weighted sums of the FANP revealed that Xinhe Elementary School MRT station was the optimal station for TOD. Accordingly, built environment planning should be undertaken to develop the urban area surrounding this station. The findings of this study may provide a reference for planning units in undertaking future TOD projects under the principle of sustainable transportation.