Public Transport Sustainability Assessment: Trends, Challenges and Future Directions

Abstract

Transportation sector is evolving with innovations, has currently prioritized integration of sustainability to ensure a secured future. Public transportation, designed to provide affordable access to all, has emerged as a prominent option within the framework of sustainability. Various methodologies have been employed to assess sustainability in public transportation. Consequently, there is a need for a comprehensive study to identify the most effective evaluation methodologies, as well as to explore future research opportunities within this domain. This comprehensive review study analyzed 56 publications sourced from the Scopus database, with publication dates spanning from 2011 to 2024. The analysis included trends in annual publications, country-specific contributions to sustainability assessments, modal choices in the studies, key concepts in the literature and areas of interest within public transport sustainability. The study also examined sustainability dimensions and indicators, as well as the evaluation techniques employed. The findings concluded that sustainability dimensions could be extended beyond the conventional three pillars; environmental, economic and social and indicators must be judiciously selected to prevent misleading outcomes. Moreover, the choice of evaluation technique should be tailored to the specific context of each study. Frequently utilized evaluation techniques included Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) for attributes prioritization, pairwise comparisons and criteria-oriented evaluations, along with the Assessment Indicator Model (AIM) for deriving an overall index. Ultimately, the study highlighted the significant potential for future research in sustainability evaluations of public transportation, particularly in the integration of various transport modes and feeder systems.