Sustainable transportation: Definitions, dimensions, and indicators – Case study of importance-performance analysis for the city of Tehran

Despite the advantages of transportation development, its negative consequences, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, air pollution, increasing energy consumption, traffic, and accidents in transportation, have caused serious concern in the world community. Following the global efforts to introduce the framework for sustainable development (SD), the sustainability concept entered the transportation of literature known as sustainable transportation (ST). We didn't find a universally agreed definition and indicators for (ST). To overcome this limitation, we extracted special terms in different definitions of (ST) and widely used indicators in selected articles. Using 60 widely used indicators and the importance-performance analysis (IPA) method, we evaluated the transportation of Tehran. Like some metropolises, Tehran city has high air and noise pollution, congestion, traffic, and accidents. The main advantage of our research is the possibility to simultaneously assess the importance, performance, and prioritize performance of indicators for improvement, with optimal cost and time. Our evaluation showed that 41 indicators (68.34%) have high importance, but their performance is low and should be improved. 80% of these indicators were related to social and environmental dimensions. We prioritized Tehran's transportation indicators and provided recommendations to improve their performance. Prioritizing indicators showed that improving the performance of Tehran's transportation, reducing natural resource consumption, attention to human health, and reducing energy consumption have high priority. Finally, we have provided a comprehensive definition (ST) of widely used terms.