Development of a Neighborhood Mobility Index for Assessing Mobility Disparities in Developing Countries with Application to the Greater Cairo Area, Egypt

Abstract

Most urban planners emphasize sustainability’s environmental and economic aspects and overlook the social equity dimension. Assessment of the current mobility situation is a prerequisite for developing socially sustainable urban mobility plans. However, current metrics for mobility assessment are data intensive and sometimes require the development of a detailed transportation model for the urban area, which is difficult to achieve in developing nations. In this study, we have created an index for assessing mobility for neighborhoods in a metropolitan area that requires minimal land-use information and utilizes online third-party travel-time data. The proposed index merges the fundamental principles of the traditional transportation planning process and congestion metrics to assess the mobility status of different neighborhoods in an urban area for a single mode of transportation. The developed neighborhood mobility index (NMI) was evaluated in the Greater Cairo Area (GCA), and the results were validated by conducting a one-dimensional ANOVA. The validation results showed that the results obtained using the developed NMI were reliable with a good degree of confidence. The case study demonstrated the capabilities of the NMI in detecting disparities between neighborhoods in a city and showed how planners and decision-makers could use it in preparing sustainable mobility plans.