Investigating and Analyzing the Socio-Cultural Barriers of Public Stable Transportation Development in Ahwaz Metropolis

The present research aims to investigate and analyze the socio-cultural barriers to the development of sustainable public transportation in Ahvaz metropolis. The study is applied-developmental, descriptive-analytical. To collect the data, library techniques and field studies (questionnaires and interviews) were employed. It used quantitative research and the TOPSIS multi-criteria decision-making method for data analysis. The research population consisted of the eight Districts of Ahvaz metropolis. To determine the sample size of the expert population, a snowball sampling method was employed, based on which 15 public transport experts were selected. The research innovation is to present a relatively complete set of barriers to the socio-cultural development of transportation, categorize the barriers and recognize the spatial differences at the city level. It is essential that other researchers have not had such scope on the subject. The research results indicated that the socio-cultural barriers to public transportation development in the eight districts of Ahvaz are different from each other, so in Districts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, respectively, the weakness of organizational culture, car-oriented lifestyle, poor participation of duty units, lack of support for children's travel, irregular getting-on/off schedule, resistance to paying public fees, and poor observance of citizen's rights are the most critical barriers to the public transportation development.