Feasibility Study of Public Transportation in Smart Urban Growth

Today, the automobile is the most important means of transportation, which has a lot of movement and energy. Concerning this process, in recent decades, concepts such as sustainable development and sustainable urban development have been proposed as solutions to the patterns of physical, social, and economic development. Therefore, problems such as the destruction of natural resources, destruction of biological systems, excessive population growth, injustice and reducing the quality of human life in the present and future can be prevented. Accordingly, governments are always trying to overcome environmental problems with various policies and programs or reduce the negative effects of human functions on the environment (pollution and environmental degradation). Khoy city, due to the special place in the region and a wide sphere of influence in terms of population and administrative and economic flows, has the most traffic in the region, especially in the city, which requires the existence of intelligent urban systems. Although we are currently witnessing public transportation and taxi systems in some parts of the city, there are still many challenges and issues until the needs of the citizens are met, which the most important of them are the lack of coverage of most parts of the city, unnecessary traffic of some citizens, lack of bicycle lanes, heavy traffic in the central and historical contexts, lack of close monitoring of the public transportation system, disorder in the transportation system, incompatibility of urban land use planning system with urban transportation system, the lack of promotion of the central sidewalk network and the weakness of security in these spaces, disorder in the urban design system including pedestrian lines, sidewalks, and the network of roads, etc. Based on this, the present study tries to identify the indicators and components in order to evaluate the performance of Khoy city transportation system by emphasizing the approach of smart urban growth and improving the quality of life of citizens. In other words, the purpose of this study is to answer the following question: - What are the most important indicators for assessing the public transportation situation based on the smart growth approach in Khoy city؟

The present research is descriptive-analytical in terms of method and practical in terms of applying the results. The statistical population of this study is the residents of Khoy city. Cochran's formula has been used to select a suitable sample for evaluation; in this context, the population of Khoy city, according to the last census in 2016, was 8845 people, so the selected sample is estimated at 383 people. The scale of measurement based on the Likert scale was from very low to very high and the way of scoring the questionnaire was from 1 to 5. Data analysis by structural equations has been exerted to analyze the research model. Through these techniques, the researcher can confirm or reject a hypothetical structure. In this regard, SPSS and Smart-PLS software programs have been exploited. The indicators were selected based on documentary-library and field studies, containing 24 indicators in 8 components.

The results of the study showed that there was a significant relationship at the level of 0.01% between the components of public transportation and smart growth. So that the most impacts related to the components of preservation of historical, safety and social monuments were 0.92 and 0.84 percent, respectively. Also at the factor loadings level, the lack of damage to open space and air pollution, encouraging growth from within and reducing sprawl growth, and creating job opportunities have had the greatest impact. Associated with intelligence, policy and safety were 19 and 68, respectively, and in contrast, the highest level of protection of historical and economic monuments was 145 and 105. Moreover, the highest significance was related to job creation, price reform, and interconnected transportation networks with values ​​of 291, 262, and 207, respectively. In contrast, the participation of the private sector, the diversity of routes between the two points, and the alignment of land-use policies with transportation had the lowest levels of significance with values of 11.8, 16.2, and 17.9, respectively.

Given the nature of development based on public transportation and its positive principles, proponents of this development believe that what should be considered in the design of urban systems is the development of comprehensive urban plans to maximize compliance between urban planning and land-use policies. Other urban transportation systems are optimal according to the characteristics of the urban network. Findings show that this inappropriate combination and uneven distribution of land-uses in development is such that it has not led to the internalization of travel in the field of development. In this way, people are required to use the automobile to do their daily chores, which leads to the demand for travel and, consequently, the need for parking and facing traffic. If there is a mixed-use in the field of development, travel by public transport or on foot to the desired destinations within the field of development, is practiced. Also, in many cases, the current situation is an obstacle in this direction, so that the traditional zoning emphasizes the development of single-use to protect the neighborhood from incompatible uses or limit residential density. For this purpose, it is necessary to re-zoning in comprehensive and detailed plans to consider the benefits of mixed-uses with public transportation, which will lead to greater compliance of the development area with the transit-oriented development approach.