Sustainability analysis in urban mobility

The urban mobility problems that are observed in transport systems of the cities which are caused as the long-short term impacts of development of the cities, increase in population, increase in travel demands and which therefore effect the economical, social and environmental quality standards have reached a point where they can not be solved by traditional urban mobility planning methods. By leadership of European Union countries, urban mobility approaches were introduced to sustainability principles and Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning (SUMP) concept has emerged. The new planning approach requires the need to evaluate and compare the sustainability of mobility in cities and to bring forward solutions to problems in order to objectify the goals of urban mobility. With this purpose, 2 metropolitans in Turkey which are preparing for Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning, İzmir and İstanbul, were chosen to benchmark their level of urban mobility sustainability with the cities of London, Barcelona and Rio De Janeiro. In framework of total 10 sustainability indicators which are gathered under economical, social and environmental dimensions, sustainability indexes of the cities were calculated, strong and weak points compared to each other were revealed, the reasons of the results were interpreted and recommendations for improvement were brought forward. Results showed that Rio De Janeiro ranked 1st, İstanbul ranked 2nd, İzmir ranked 3rd, Barcelona ranked 4th and London ranked 5th in urban mobility sustainability hierarchy. To understand and observe the strong and weak points of the cities in terms of economical, environmental and social sustainability in urban mobility, sensitivity analyses were conducted and changes in the sustainability indexes were evaluated. With the observed results, recommendations have been given on which measures should be taken into consideration in transportation planning in the cities.