Social Media and Crowd Sourcing to Evaluate and Compare Priorities and Preferences for Sustainable Transportation System

Abstract

To ensure that decisions are made reflecting public needs, public participation has become an indispensable part of transportation planning process. Social media and crowd sourcing are gaining popularity day by day to interact and engage with the general public in various sectors. Though this approach has high potential, its application has been so far been quite limited in the field of transportation planning. This research aims to evaluate the possibility to conduct public participation through the use of crowd sourcing and social media in transportation planning. For this, it uses social media to engage with general people to identify their views on sustainable transportation system. Based on this, it designs an online questionnaire survey to ascertain and prioritize various aspects of sustainable modes of transport, e.g., walking, cycling and public transport environment through Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The questionnaire was spread through social media. A total of 80 general public and 10 transport experts responded to the questionnaire. Through this, the study identifies and compares the perception of general road users and transportation experts regarding sustainable transportation. The outcome suggests that both the groups put highest priority for public transport followed by walking and bicycling. However, the survey responses show variations between general public and expert’s opinions in prioritizing components of these modes of transport. Based on the survey, according to general public, for a developed public transport special facilities for women and children, monitoring devices for surveillance purpose must be provided in the transport while the transportation experts thought is to give the behavior of transport operators and neatness of transport the highest priority. To achieve a positive sidewalk environment the general road users think provision of street amenities like toilets and dustbins, prohibiting hawkers on footpath should be given highest priority while experts have given provision of evening lights and seating facilities at bus stations highest importance. In case of bicycling, both the general road users and experts prioritized provision of separate crossing system for cyclists, speed monitoring system and evening lights on roads as the most important necessities for achieving a proper bicycling environment. This information is expected to be highly beneficial for both the academicians and practitioners from relevant backgrounds.