Environmental and social sustainable operation for parking lots within the Hilla central business district (CBD)

Abstract

Central Business District (CBD) is the undisputed center of traffic development resulting from growing industry and economic activity. Attracts people from various parts of the city as well as its area to shop and leisure services. To achieve the objective of this research the Central Commercial Area, Sector 2 in Hilla, was selected to evaluate the sustainability process on the basis of environmental and social indicators for car parks (20 parking lots), as well as identifying the level of service for the pedestrian sidewalks for three roads (Street 60, Street 40 and Bab al-Hussein). The methodology of this research can be summarized by obtaining field data for the volumes of pedestrian traffic using the imaging process, and vehicle parking data (air pollutants from vehicle exhausts, noise level and a number of accidents) through collaboration with relevant government institutions. This work is developing a method for achieving a sustainable composite index for the available information. The indicators are incorporated into environmental, social and economic indicators in a composite sustainable index in a way that overcomes the restrictions of normalization, weight, and aggregation. The results of the composite sustainable transportation index for car parking sustainability range from very low level (2 parking), low level (4 parking), moderate level (12 parking) and high level (2 parking). While the study concluded that the level of service for pedestrian sidewalks is of type (D) for Bab Al-Hussein Street and type (A) for Street 60 and Street 40.