Spatial Prioritization of the Road Transport Development in Iran’s Provinces with a Focus on WASPAS Decision Making Model

Transportation is one of the most important pillars of urban development that is essential for the mobility of people and goods, and effective productivity in urban areas will only be achieved with the supply for transportation. Sustainable transport is one of the most effective factors of regional development because, with a sustainable transport, justice can be created in various social, economic, and environmental dimensions, which represents the right path towards regional development. The purpose of this study is to determine the development of the transport road network in Iran's provinces. To this end, the WASPAS decision making technique, which is one of the recent discrete and compensatory models for solving the problems of multiple attribute decision making and its goal is to choose the best alternative, was used. Regarding the factors which were studied and the practical nature of this study, descriptive-analytical method has been used. The data have been collected through library and field methods. The results of the study showed that there are a lot of inequalities between the provinces in terms of the development of transport road network. In fact, the existence of metropolises such as Shiraz, Isfahan, Mashhad, Tehran, Tabriz, and Ahvaz (excluding the Karaj metropolitan area), which ranked the highest in the country, are effective on the development of transportation in the province. On the other hand, the provinces of Qom and Alborz, despite their proximity to the capital, are not in good conditions in terms of the development of their transport road network.