Monday, November 19, 2018

Economic Impacts of Adopting a Sustainable Transport System in Beirut

By Mazen Omran, Johnny Ojeil, and Youssef Fawaz

The proposed Beirut Master Plan aims to put the city back on the international map as a hub for trade and investment, a place to work, and a destination for leisure. The execution of this plan has started with major construction works taking place in the Beirut Central District (BCD) and its planned natural extension on reclaimed land known as the New Waterfront District (NWD).
However, this proposed Master Plan may not achieve its main economic objectives due to the lack of transport infrastructure and multi-modal systems, i.e. transport is lagging behind. Congestion levels are currently unacceptable and will get worse in the future as a result of these development proposals. The key missing link is that Beirut is lagging on the sustainable public transport front and therefore it will not be able to economically compete in a strong manner with other cities in the region. 
The work carried out in this paper demonstrates the economic benefit of a sustainable transport system. It compared a scenario with and without such system, and calculated loss time as a result of being held up in congestion during key peak hours mainly due to relying entirely on the private car. The work demonstrates that in addition to reducing congestion levels a sustainable transport system will generate benefits related to travel time, accident costs, vehicle operating costs, carbon emissions, environmental impacts, wellbeing of individuals, attraction of international companies to locate in Beirut with reduced congestions levels prevailing, positive effect on business efficiency, and wider labor catchment in terms of penetration of non-car owning communities thus improving labor mobility and accessibility.
Qualitative and quantitative analyses were carried out to determine the impacts of adopting a sustainable transport system on the economy. The results were alarming for the ‘Do Nothing Scenario’, i.e. remaining reliant on the private car as a sole means of transport. The analyses showed that without a road map adopting a sustainable transport system, Beirut will reach an economic standstill. Therefore, Beirut will have to develop a multi-modal transport system to become resilient and to be able to meet the economic growth that is being pursued by stakeholders and interested parties alike.
A broad but critical Action Plan was produced as part of the work that set the key functions required to move transport into a full multi-modal system that will give people a real choice to choose based on policy changes and traffic management initiatives including parking control.


Rue Weygand, Beirut Central District, Lebanon. 20111126

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

A critical review of new mobility services for urban transport

By Maria Kamargianni, Weibo Li, Melinda Matyas, and Andreas Schäfer

The growing pressure on urban passenger transport systems has increased the demand for new and innovative solutions to increase its efficiency. One approach to tackle this challenge has been the slow but steady shift towards shared mobility services (car-, bike-sharing etc.). Building on these new modes and the developments in information and communication technologies, the concept of “Mobility as a Service” (MaaS) has recently come to light and offers convenient door-to-door transport without the need to own a private vehicle. The term Mobility as a Service (MaaS) stands for buying mobility services based on consumer needs instead of buying the means of mobility. In recent years, various MaaS schemes have been arisen around the world. The objective of this paper is to review these newly existing mobility services and develop an index to evaluate the level of mobility integration for each based on the assumption that higher level of integration is more appealing to travellers. The review presented in this paper allows a comparison among the schemes and provides the background and the key points of MaaS systems that the research community could use for designing surveys. It also provides significant insights to transport operators and authorities on the elements they should take into account to apply an attractive MaaS scheme that could effectively shift demand away from private vehicles.

In the Days Before Uber
More studies on public trasnportation:

Urban Travel Behavior in Large Cities of MENA Region: Survey Results of Cairo, Istanbul, and Tehran

Promoting Schoolchildren's Physical Activity by Change in Transport to School Behavior: Statistical Analysis

Longitudinal correlations of car ownership with socio-economics, urban form, and transport infrastructure in Latin America: Example from Ensenada, Mexico 

A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF DENSITIES WITHIN THE PEDESTRIAN SHEDS AROUND METRO STATIONS: THE CASE OF TEHRAN

What shapes local public transportation in Europe? Economics, mobility, institutions, and geography

Transforming the Land Public Transport System in Malaysia

Ten Principles for Successful Development Around Trans

Friday, July 6, 2018

Urban Travel Behavior in Large Cities of MENA Region: Survey Results of Cairo, Istanbul, and Tehran

By Houshmand E. Masoumi, Amr Ah. Gouda, Lucia Layritz, Pia Stendera, Cynthia Matta, Haya Tabbakh, Sima Razavi, Houshiar Masoumi, Betül Mannasoğlu, Özlem Kılınç, Ashraf M. Sharara, Mahmoud Elnably, Ahmad Alhakeem, Sherzad Ismail, Erik Fruth

The present discussion paper summarizes an urban mobility survey as a part of the project “Urban Travel Behavior in Large Cities of MENA Region” (UTB-MENA) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) undertaken in summer and autumn 2017 in Tehran, Istanbul, and Cairo. This data collection was conducted in 18 neighborhoods located in different urban forms related to three different eras: traditional urban form, in-between (transitional) urban form, and new developments. The survey instrument included 31 questions organized in six different sections. As a result of face-to-face interviews with residents as well as quantification of several land use indicators, a database of 8284 validated subjects (Cairo: 2786 , Istanbul: 2781 , Tehran: 2717) was created by the research team based in Berlin, Tehran, Istanbul, and Cairo. The results of 46 variables (24 continuous and 22 categorical) are presented in this paper. The neighborhood-level precision of the findings is 4.5% to 4.7% for individual variables and 1.8% to 2.4% for household variables. These findings make the data representative for the case-study neighborhoods. These data are expected to provide a reliable sample for researchers of the region for the purpose of strengthening human-oriented urban transportation planning and research against the mainstream of transportation engineering by bringing in disaggregate individual urban mobility data into urban transport research of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Istanbul rooftops

More about urban transport and urban planning in the Middle East:

Drivers of urban sprawl in two large Middle-eastern countries: literature on Iran and Egypt

A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF DENSITIES WITHIN THE PEDESTRIAN SHEDS AROUND METRO STATIONS: THE CASE OF TEHRAN

URBANIZATION TRENDS AND URBAN PLANNING STRATEGIES IN THREE MAJOR MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRIES: IRAN, EGYPT, AND TURKEY

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Drivers of urban sprawl in two large Middle-eastern countries: literature on Iran and Egypt

By Houshmand E. Masoumi, Maryamsadat Hosseini, and Amr Ah. Gouda

This paper reviews the relevant literature of Iran and Egypt as two large countries of the region and concludes that four phenomena are common between the two countries and are accountable for sprawling, namely (1) wholesale land selling to the lower economic class, (2) defciencies of planning systems in controlling development plans, (3) fast and uncontrolled increase in urban population, and (4) rural-urban migration. These drivers are categorized in two classes of demographic and planning-related trends. Besides, there is a number of peculiar trends that have nationwide causes but are uncommon in Iran and Egypt. The authors of this paper consider that the demographic drivers or sprawl addressed by the Middle Eastern scholars are not actual causes but only consequences, or there is a correlation between the demographic factors and sprawl. More in-depth historical and socioeconomic studies are needed to fnd the associations between sprawl and unstudied phenomena like change in technologies, culture, and lifestyle.

View of Cairo (القاهرة) from the Saladin Citadel (قلعة صلاح الدين)

More about urban sprawl in developing countries:

URBANIZATION TRENDS AND URBAN PLANNING STRATEGIES IN THREE MAJOR MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRIES: IRAN, EGYPT, AND TURKEY

Urban Sprawl: A view from developing and developed Countries

The Status of Urban and Suburban Sprawl in Egypt and Iran

Evaluation of Urban Sprawl Speed and Intensity Based on International Urbanization. Example from a Mexican City

URBAN SPRAWL AND CLIMATIC CHANGES IN TEHRAN

Monitoring and modeling the urban growth of mid-size cities in Iran by Markov model: the case study of Zanjan City

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Promoting Schoolchildren's Physical Activity by Change in Transport to School Behavior: Statistical Analysis

By Houshmand E. Masoumi

During the past decade, a number or researchers have focused on the interdisciplinary topic of active transport to school (ATS) and children’s health and wellbeing including their body weight and Body Mass Index (BMI). Most of the recent studies are focused on a handful of high-income societies, leaving other countries less researched. Thus, this study targeted both high-income and less-studied contexts within the European context. The aim was to provide reliable inter-contextual data for facilitating comparative studies as well as undertaking preliminary analyses on the contextual differences in children’s walking to school, relationships between parent’s commuting mode choice and that of their children, the associations of built environment with ATS and BMI, and finally noteworthy points for interventions for promoting children’s school-based physical activity. Using the results of surveys undertaken in nine European cities in 2016, statistical analyses were conducted, which led to preliminary results confirming strong significant associations of the built environment with children’s ATS as well as strong and significant associations of parents’ commute mode choice with that of their children. These preliminary results do not confirm significant differences between walking to school in different European contexts. It is probable that these differences exist regarding biking to school, but this may be tested in future research. This study underlines the circumstances of planning a more active school commuting behavior in the future of European societies: activation of 9-12-year-old European children’s school commuting is recommended to be done by changing the parent’s commute mode choices as well as integrating urban planning, transportation planning, and school site selection in future urban plans. Awareness of policy makers, families, and also children may be essential in planning more active school commuting. Applying the results of the surveys done during this project, future research will target inter-contextual differences between factors such as physical activity, ATS, and BMI, correlations between the perceptions of children and parents regarding school commuting and neighborhood and the associations with physical activity and BMI, the possible importance of city size in determining all the above factors regardless of the national context, and the differences between the tendencies and phenomena influencing school commuting-related physical activity and BMI in emerging European countries compared to high-income countries.

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Schools Out Girls

More about children's active commuting to school: