Urban Travel Behavior in Large Cities of MENA Region (UTB-MENA)
Final Report Abstract
The characteristics of urban travels of passengers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and their preferences, attitudes, and perceptions towards urban travels is unknown compared to high-income countries. Such complex relations are even more vague particularly about land use and the connections to urban planning policies. With the fast pace of urbanization in the three countries of Iran, Turkey, and Egypt, and the changes in lifestyles in the twentieth century, lack of understanding and reliable evidence about the relations between societal phenomena and urban mobility has been known to some researchers, although it still needs to be explained to policymakers and politicians. The project UTB-MENA was to fill out some parts of this gap. The project aimed at providing scientific materials about the connections of urban travel behavior with personal, household, and societal traits based on the primary data of urban passengers of Tehran, Istanbul, and Cairo, so that the academics and policymakers of not only three countries, but also those of other countries of the region can refer to them. The project fulfilled five main objectives: (1) undertaking microscale comparative studies between travel behaviors in different land use types of MENA large cities: (2) developing land use/transportation models for the three selected MENA pilot cities, (3) generalizing the outcomes to several large cities of MENA, by transferability and applicability studies, (4) developing strategies for the future urban development of the region, aiming at promotion of more sustainable transportation, and (5) defining future LUTI research strategies for MENA countries. For fulfilling these objectives, a data collection was undertaken in the three case-study cities including 8284 validated face-to-face interviews (Cairo: 2786, Istanbul: 2781, Tehran: 2717) in 2017 in eighteen neighborhoods of different age and urban form type. Moreover, the land use of the urban environment of the respondents were quantified by means of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) within a catchment area of 600 m based on street network. As a result, a large dataset of including 45 variables was generated. This dataset was the basis of statistical modeling and analysis of urban travel behaviors. The project findings shed light on the determinants of some important aspects of urban travel behavior such as commute and non-commute trip generation, mode choice, and commuting distance. The results show that the socioeconomic traits have prominent effects on urban travel behaviors and decisions. The attitudes and perceptions that show transportation mode choices in MENA are somehow different from high-income countries, e.g. social and cultural issues are a main barrier of active transportation especially biking in the MENA countries, while in the Western countries, comfort and convenience and accessibility are the most important determinants of mode choice. The association the built environment is very important in MENA like in high-income and Western countries. The findings of the project about the importance of land use attributes in urban mobility behavior can be use for urban planning policymaking and decision taking. The example of such attributes is street connectivity, which has been identified as a very important indicator of travel behaviors. Other findings of the project show that the usage of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) such as ridesourcing (such as Taxi apps and shared cars) might not be as sustainable as large transportation service providers like Uber, etc. advertise. This is an unusual finding, which is not in line with the mainstream study results produced in high-income countries. However, there are some positive findings about ridesourcing as well: in Cairo and Tehran, ridesourcing users are less likely than regular private car users to replace walking by using vehicles. In these two cities, there is a correlation between the regular use of ridesourcing and the frequent use of public transport. In these two cities, the regular users of ridesourcing are more likely to cycle to near destinations than non-regular ridesourcing users. Although there are some differences between travel behaviors in the three case cities, the overall findings of the project indicate contextual differences between behaviors in the large cities of the MENA region and high-income countries. This finding confirms the hypothesis of context-sensitivity of urban travel behaviors. The results of this study are transferable to up to 27 cities of the MENA region that each accommodate more than one million inhabitants. This provides a good possibility for urban policy makers to shift the mode choices of the region towards sustainable modes. Moreover, the models generated by the project can be used as algorithms for the future decision support tools and applications.
Publications
- (2019), “A Discrete Choice Analysis of Transport Mode Choice Causality and Perceived Barriers of Sustainable Mobility in the MENA Region”, conditionally accepted to get published in Transport Policy. Volume 79, July 2019, pp. 37-53
Masoumi, Houshmand, E.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2019.04.005) - (2019), “Neighborhood-Scale Urban Form Typologies of Large Metropolitan Areas: Observations on Tehran, Istanbul, and Cairo”, Cities, Volume 85, pp. 170-186
Masoumi, Houshmand, E., Terzi, Fatih, Serag, Yehya
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2018.09.005) - (2020), "The Association Between the Regular Use of ICT Based Mobility Services and The Bicycle Mode Choice in Tehran and Cairo", International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol. 17, No. 23, pp. 8767
Mostofi, Hamid, Masoumi, Houshmand, Dienel, Hans-Liudger
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17238767) - (2020), “A Roadmap and Transferability Analysis of Urban Mobility Studies in Tehran, Istanbul, and Cairo to Other Large MENA Cities”, Urban Development Issues, Vol. 65, Issue 1, pp. 27-44
Masoumi, Houshmand, Fruth, Erik
(See online at https://doi.org/10.2478/udi-2020-0003) - (2020), “The Association between Regular Use of Ridesourcing and Walking Mode Choice in Cairo and Tehran”, Sustainability, Vol. 12, 5623
Mostofi, Hamid, Masoumi, Houshmand, Dienel, Hans-Liudger
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3390/su12145623) - (2020), “The Relationship between Regular Use of Ridesourcing and Frequency of Public Transport Use in the MENA Region (Tehran and Cairo), Sustainability, Vol. 12, No. 19, pp. 8134
Mostofi, Hamid, Masoumi, Houshmand, Dienel, Hans-Liudger
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3390/su12198134) - (2020), “Urban Commute Travel Distances in Tehran, Istanbul, and Cairo: Weighted Least Square Models”, Urban Science, Vol.4, Issue 3, 39
Masoumi, Houshmand
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci4030039)
