Transport sustainability index: Melbourne case study

Abstract

Quantifying the sustainability of urban transport is important as evidenced by a growing number of studies to measure sustainability in transportation. This paper reviewed major initiatives reported in the current literature, which dealt with the challenge of measuring transport sustainability using long lists of indicators. To overcome the issue of using too many indicators for evaluation, this paper develops a method for obtaining a composite transport sustainability index for Melbourne statistical local areas (SLAs). Nine sustainability indicators relevant to urban transport which deal with environmental, social and economic aspects were selected by assessing and reviewing past research and based on available data for Melbourne. The indicators were integrated to environmental, social, and economic sub-indices and then to a composite index, in a way that overcomes the limitations on normalisation, weighting and aggregation. Indices developed based on the applied method allow comparisons between different statistical local areas (SLAs) and could help organisations for better understanding of the measures and activities that influence the sustainability of urban transport, and for identifying appropriate responses for addressing them in Melbourne.