An alternative method for assessing urban transportation carrying capacity

Abstract

Urban transportation is a complex system typically composed of car, bus, non-motorized, and metro travel modes, which connects various residential traveling and transport facilities. It is important to have a proper method to facilitate understanding on urban transportation carrying capacity (UTCC) of individual types of travel modes and the balance performance between the carrying capacities offered by different travel modes. This study introduces an alternative model named “load-carrier” perspective method for assessing the four types of UTCC. A measurement of coordination degree is used to measure if the carrying capacities between different types of travel modes are developed and utilized in balance. An application of the proposed method is conducted by using empirical data collected from 805 traffic analysis zones (TAZs) in Chongqing City in China in 2020. The research findings suggest that: 1) the UTCC performance can be divided into five grades, namely, low, mild, moderate, high, and extremely high level of utilization intensity. 2) most of the TAZs in Chongqing were in low and mild level of utilization intensity of UTCC. 3) the balance performance between four types of transportation carrying capacities was poor in Chongqing City, with 97.1% of the sample TAZs are in imbalanced and slight imbalanced status. The demonstration conducted proves that the introduced method provides an important tool for examining the UTCC performance by different travel modes.

Keywords

• Urban transportation carrying capacity
• Load-carrier perspective method
• Coupling coordination degree method
• Balance performance