Loading...

A Transit-Oriented Development Model for Renovation of Deteriorated Metropolitan Areas

Soleimani, Hojjatollah | 2022

206 Viewed
  1. Type of Document: Ph.D. Dissertation
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 54979 (09)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Civil Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Poorzahedy, Hossein
  7. Abstract:
  8. Deteriorated old urban neighborhoods usually have no access to appropriate municipal services, and have small-sized buildings, densely populated areas, and earthquake-prone structures. Residents in these areas do not have the will and financial ability to renovate their aged properties. A questionnaire survey of the citizens living in the deteriorated areas of the City of Tehran showed that 80% of households do not have a positive monthly financial balance and cannot afford the cost of reconstructing their properties. Serious drawbacks of previous attempts to renovate deteriorated areas, including lack of adequate government funding, and adding to the dependence of local citizens on automobiles and thereby increasing traffic congestion and air pollution, caused this study to utilize transit-oriented development (TOD) concepts to solve two major problems of large metropolitan areas simultaneously: (1) in-area renovation of deteriorated buildings, and (2) TOD-based Rapid Transit (RT) Network Design (ND), to reduce traffic congestion, air pollution, and the other unwanted consequences of the excessive use of automobiles. This is proposed by a tri-partite public-private partnership )government- residents-private investors) of Build- Operate- transfer (BOT) type, in which the (local) government introduces a network of Bus RT (BRT) lines, the (low-income) landlords of the deteriorated neighborhoods trade-off their land lots for equivalent value of built housing floor area next to BRT lines, and the private sector, in return, benefits from building and operating the commercial-service complexes, the region was deprived of. The results of a survey administered on citizens living in deteriorated areas in Tehran showed that 30% of the landlords were willing to accept the deal even with smaller apartments than their current homes; 80% of them willing to accept with reasonable trade-offs of land-to-floor area ratios; and only 10% of the residents were hard to satisfy.The proposed plan is modeled as a bi-level multi-agent mathematical program, in which the agents maximize their respective utilities or benefits subject to the decisions of the other agents, to simulate the proposed process. A new meta-heuristic algorithm is devised to search for the solution of this program, and the results were validated by a test problem. Applying the model on a simplified network of Ahvaz showed that: (1) Changes of the government budget level from 0 (Do Nothing Alternative, DNA) to 1 (Build All BRT lines) would reduce the total travel times by 35%, as compared to the DNA. At level 1 of the government budget, changes of the private sector budget level from 0 (Do Nothing) to 1 (Undertake All existing area renovation plans) would reduce this quantity by 4.7%. That is, BRT line construction has the major role in reducing the Total Travel Time of the transportation network, and TOD a minor role. (2) The Vehicle-Kilometers traveled in the network, which is closely related to the vehicle emissions and city air pollution, improves by 24% when full government investment on BRT lines is made, and by 27% for full joint government and private sector investments. (3) Increase in the government’s level of investment on BRT lines increases public transit patronage. For example, for 40% government budget level, this patronage level increases by 4.5% with the increase of private sector budget, which is due to the reduction of the access times for the transit passengers. (4) Although the government investment alone has no effect on safety and security of the citizens or private sector economic contribution to the society well-being; increase in public-private partnership gives both of these quantities an upward trend. At investment level 1 for the two agents, the private sector benefit-cost ratio becomes 2.23 and the total number of citizens moving to new homes become 175,209 persons.
  9. Keywords:
  10. Transit Network Design ; Meta Heuristic Algorithm ; Earthquake ; Transit Oriented Development (TOD) ; Vulnerable Buildings ; Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) ; Hazard Models ; Voluntary Relocation ; Residential Displacement

 Digital Object List

 Bookmark

No TOC