Designing the area of Mohammadshahr Metro Station in Karaj, based on Transit-Oriented Development

The most vital invention of the 20th century, the automobile, led to the horizontal expansion of cities and their excessive dispersion, which in addition to creating environmental crises and conflicts with the goals of sustainable development, has brought urban and social isolation with itself. In this regard, among the most important proposals that were welcomed and considered at the end of the 20th century was the development based on Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). In a short definition this approach means that dense development with a very suitable and appropriate dense combination of reasonable arrangement of uses near stations and public transport routes that leads to the formation of a quality of life as well as an acceptable and high level of economic competition becomes sociable and at the same time meets the environmental requirements related to sustainable development. The redefining of Mohammadshahr metro station based on TOD creates a suitable opportunity to distribute the number of trips from the railway transportation base from Alborz province to Tehran province and provides the conditions to reduce the use of private vehicles on the routes. It balanced the use of three railway stations in Karaj (Karaj, Gulshahr, Mohammadshahr). Due to the proximity of Karaj that is the case of this study to Tehran, which is the capital of Iran, the existence of many daily trips between these two cities that most of these trips are made for business purposes, and the high population growth rate of Karaj city in recent years, which migration adaptability is one of the main reasons for this, the importance of implementing new urban planning approaches, including development based on public transportation in this area is clearly observable. The current research is based on the objective in the category of applied research as it seeks to strengthen land use and urban transportation by using theoretical foundations related to TOD. Based on its methodology and its deep matter of research, this paper is placed within the descriptive research group. Its purpose is to design the station range of the desired site based on the TOD approach. The method of data collection in the present study is made out of a questionnaire. Among the presented scenarios, the best scenario has been selected based on the requirements of the development approach related on public transportation and the collective opinion of urban planning experts regarding the weighting of the criteria and components affecting the analysis and evaluation of the proposed options for the study area. Using the capacity of an active out-of-town terminal as the Shahid Kalantari terminal in Karaj city to connect to Mohammadshahr metro station and create a linear transport corridor is the innovation and novelty of the present research. The public transportation system supports various types of transportation and in addition to the urban design around the station, the requirements of land use planning and densities based on development based on public transportation, increasing the intensity of land use around the station has been taken into consideration.