TRANSPORTATION SUSTAINABILITY: CASE STUDIES ON URBAN TRANSPORTATION IN MEGACITIES OF DEVELOPED AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the current situation of transportation systems in megacities of developed cities and developing cities. The growth of urban population spurred the development of motorization. The surge of motor vehicles also created a series of problems involving traffic congestion, environmental pollution, and frequent traffic collisions. These problems not only have happened in developing countries, many current megacities in developed countries were faced with the same problems at the time of developing the transportation infrastructure a few decades ago. The dissertation discussed the sustainable components of transportation in three megacities: London, Tokyo, and Los Angeles, aiming to explore the feasible policies and measures for building the sustainable transport system in other developing megacities. In the section of sustainability assessment, the dissertation went through social components, environmental component, economic and financial component for each megacity case. Through the comparison between the three case studies, it is easy to find some common strategies to deal with the general traffic problems and make the transportation more sustainable. However, the current traffic conditions in developing megacities are much more complicated than what those developed megacities used to be, due to overloaded population base, ultrafast urbanization and belated planning for the outbreak of motorization. Although the development of transportation in developing megacities cannot simply copy from the developed megacities, the sustainable transport measures to handle the specific problems can be universal and applicable to developing cities. Overall, the dissertation mainly presented three types of sustainable transportation pattern by dissecting the current transportation of the three megacities, which would provide references for the developing countries on the way to build up sustainable transportation in the future.