Environmental Aspect of Urban Transport System Sustainability Assessment

The issue of air pollution from vehicle emissions is one of the most pressing environmental and socio-economic threats of today. The growing number of vehicles leads to increased atmospheric pollution, which is particularly evident in major cities, where the density of transport flows greatly exceeds that of suburban areas. This results in worsened air quality, negatively impacting public health and ecosystems, and further aggravating the problem of climate change. One of the key solutions to this issue is ensuring the sustainable development of transportation systems, which should combine social, economic, and environmental efficiency. The environmental aspect of assessing the sustainability of urban transportation systems involves evaluating their impact on the environment and the effectiveness of measures to reduce this impact. Priority areas include reducing pollutant emissions, transitioning to alternative energy sources, and developing electric transportation. Additionally, the development of infrastructure for cycling and walking plays a crucial role in reducing the level of motorization. When assessing measures to improve the environmental efficiency of a specific transport system, a range of factors must be considered that characterize the specific features of the functioning of each city's transport system. Such factors include the composition of the transport flow; the distribution of the vehicle fleet structure by fuel type; the characteristics of travel distribution by mode of transport; weather and climatic conditions; the technical condition of vehicles, and so on. Considering these factors will enhance the accuracy and reliability of the results of evaluating the impact of transport on the environment, thus allowing for a more grounded approach to establishing the priority directions for ensuring the sustainability of the urban transport system. The article proposes an approach to assessing the environmental efficiency of the urban transport system in the context of ensuring the sustainability of its functioning, which is based on the adaptation of the existing methodology for assessing pollutant emissions in vehicle exhaust gases to network calculation. The results of testing the specified methodology for the city of Kharkiv showed that increasing the attractiveness of urban public transport services for the population and, accordingly, increasing the share of travel by this method will contribute to a significant reduction in emissions and will contribute to a significant increase in environmental efficiency, and therefore ensuring the sustainability of the urban transport system. As a direction of further research, it is planned to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the efficiency of the route system using the multi-criteria analysis method.