Sustainable Urban Transportation: Concepts, Policies, and Methodologies

This article summarizes the main ideas of workshop presenters from the Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies in December 2004 on sustainability issues of the urban transportation system. The authors first review the issue of sustainable development and address the issue of whether an urban transportation system is sustainable. Topics which are discussed involve whether the poor is disadvantaged under urban transportation policies, if energy can be saved by urban compaction, how the externalities of air pollution can be estimated, how governments could obtain the highest return of royalty from build-operate-transfer infrastructure projects, and if the sustainable transport planning experience is transferable.