Economic, Social, and Environmental Sustainable Operation of Roadways within the Central Business District (CBD) sector at Hilla City Incorporated with Public Transport

Abstract

The maintaining of sustainability is a constant challenge. Sustainability can be achieved by maintaining road traffic safety or preventing collisions and using pollution-free vehicles and safe transporting of goods. This research addresses the assessment of measuring transport sustainability based on economic, social, and environmental indicators for public transport routes. The methodology of this research can be described by collecting data (air pollution, noise, number of incidents, and volumes of traffic) from 15 public transport links within the central business district (sector 2) in the city of Hilla through collaboration with the departments concerned. To avoid the problem of utilizing several evaluation indicators, this research is developing a procedure to obtain a sustainable composite index to available data collection. The indicators of sustainability for urban transportation addressing the economic (delay), social (safety), and environmental (noise, air pollution) aspects depend on existing data. Indicators are combined in the economic, social, and environmental indicators into a composite sustainability index, in a way that overcomes the restrictions of normalization, weight, and aggregation. It is an attempt to estimate the sustainability of transport within the CBD sector No.2 in Hilla, which is integrated with public transport. According to the ICST (Composite Sustainability Transportation Index) value for roads associated with public transportation in Sector No.2 of the CBD Hilla City, the overall assessment for sustainability operation is from moderate level (9 links) to low (5 links) and a high level (1 link).