Analysis of Paradigm Shift Policies of Sustainable Urban Transportation(Case study: Tabriz Metropolis)

Problem Statement:

 Paradigmatic changes in urban transportation are based on changing the approaches and basics of planning, decision making and policy making from the vehicle-driven model to the human-centered model. Hence, it can be said that the human is at the core of the discourse of a new paradigm.

Analysis of the paradigm shift of Tabriz metropolitan transportation policies to achieve sustainable urban transportation is the main objective of the research.

The present research is based on the pragmatism paradigm. Quantitative data were collected by a researcher-made questionnaire from experts (360 individuals). For analyzing quantitative data, one-sample t-test, Friedman and linear regression were used. Qualitative research data were collected through exploratory interviews and semi-structured interviews with 30 managers and experts and the analysis was done using Grand Theory method.

Paradigm Model of qualitative findings showed that the economic structure, the level of socioeconomic development, the process urbanization of the country as a dominant platform have led to the slow shift in the paradigm of transportation policies in Tabriz metropolis. Thus, the technical infrastructure overcomes other policies. Also, the quantitative findings, while confirming the qualitative results, showed that among the various sustainable transportation policies, ‘planning for public transportation practices’, ‘traffic management measures’, and ‘speed constraints’ policies have a significant impact on the Tabriz metropolitan transportation, so that the standardized coefficients (β) of these policies were respectively 0.726, 0.583 and 0.508, which were significant at the error level of less than 0.01.

Innovation: 

The use of the Analytical Framework (ASI) Model and the mixed method methodology are innovations of this study.