A Rational Decision-Making Process with Public Engagement for Designing Public Transport Services: A Real Case Application in Italy

Abstract

The sustainable design of public transport services is a crucial issue that may affect the economy of local areas and the social inclusion of their inhabitants. Indeed, transport accessibility of households, businesses, and retail activities is one of the main drivers that influence location choices and sustainable development and where the public transport services may play a key (positive) role. Furthermore, the economic crisis of the 2009 and the current ones caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has further limited the funds available for public services, including the transport sector. In this critical context, sound design of public transport services assumes great importance, especially in light of financial constraints. Starting from these considerations, the aim of this paper has been to propose an innovative methodology for designing public transport services based on a rational decision-making process with stakeholder engagement, aiming to perform a sustainable development perspective. The proposed methodology combines technical aspects, social and political issues, equity perspectives, and it is aimed in obtaining a design solution that can be accepted by the whole community. The proposed theoretical design methodology has also been applied to a case study in order to verify its applicability to a real context, consisting of the design of the public transport plan of the province of Foggia in southern Italy. Applications results show that the sustainable design scenario is not only the best ones from a technical point of view, but also participated, equitable, and approved by both policymakers and stakeholders.

Exploring geographical distribution of transportation research themes related to COVID-19 using text network approach

“…The network also presents the densest connection public – transport which explains the gravity of research work done on the disease spread through public transport ( Anan et al, 2020 ; Beria & Lunkar, 2020 ; Coppola & Fabiis, 2020 ; Zhen et al, 2020 ). Various aspects of sustainable designs and strategic responses for public transport that are linked to COVID-19 are discussed ( Cartenì, D’Acierno, & Gallo, 2020 ; Tirachini & Cats, 2020 ).…”

Development Process of Workplace Mobility Planning in Three Pilot Locations

“…Although the study does not evaluate the specific role of a workplace, the developed general approach could be used in the process of workplace mobility planning. Carteni et al [17] develop a decision-making method with stakeholders based on an iterative process, which considers the feasibility of the legislative, planning, technical, and stakeholder aspects. Both studies are developed for larger scale projects compared to workplace mobility plans, while some elements of the method can be applied in current research work.…”

“…The elaborated method contains techniques of the participatory process and defines the steps toward the choice of suitable measures. The steps of the method are based on previous papers related to decision-making processes by Le Pira et al [16] and Carteni et al [17] and to the participatory approach by Keserű et al [14] and Soria-Lara et al [15] with the aim of including the relevant stakeholders and providing the best measures fitting the local circumstances. The elaborated method is applied in three pilot locations, where the feedback during the demonstrations is used to finetune the process.…”

A Sustainable Evaluation Processes for Investments in the Transport Sector: A Combined Multi-Criteria and Cost–Benefit Analysis for a New Highway in Italy

“…In order to obtain a shared decision, it is needed to take into account the influence and the interactions of the main stakeholders involved in the project. Stakeholder engagement persists in the whole transportation planning process (as suggested in [2,91,92]), starting with the initial phase of design scenario identification (Figure 1). In the MCA, the stakeholder engagement also takes place in the weight definition of the different analyzed criteria leading to an agreed outcome with the main stakeholders (Figure 1).…”